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AWO Programs

Media's Role in supporting Arab Women

During the first meeting of AWO’s Supreme Council, the Arab first ladies, members of the AWO Supreme Council, believing in the need to develop a policy for Arab media to highlight the pivotal role of women in advancing their communities, and to provide a fair image of Arab women, that reflects their contributions, achievements and inputs in changing the social culture, took the decision, to include media as one of the work priorities of the Organization for Arab women.
 
In response to this, the AWO adopted a program on "Media and Support for Women". Media was a key component in the first AWO project: the Survey Studies Project. The Organization participated with the General Federation of Arab Journalists in organizing a workshop joining 60 journalists and media specialists from eighteen Arab States in May 2005, to discuss women issues in the media. This workshop was followed by a workshop for Arab media specialists in November 2005 which focused on raising awareness on the need to formulate media materials sensitive to the gender perspective. The above mentioned projects resulted in a series of recommendations all revolving around the absolute need to have media strategy for Arab women. The AWO undertook the coordination between the Member States for its formulation, pursuing the efforts for its actual implementation.
 
As implementation of the strategy, AWO initiated one of its programs entitled Professionalism in the Media. The program is a set of high-level training courses and workshops dedicated to media personnel in general, and women media personnel in particular, to help them deal with the serious and creative media work on women's affairs in the information era. The first training workshop in this program tackled the topic of writing for radio and television, in Tunisia, during the period 10-13 November 2009. This was followed by a training workshop on the subject of Research and Analytical Skills in the Media and intended for female personnel working in the field of visual media (television). The workshop was conducted in Tunisia, from November 29 to December 2, 2010. The third training workshop was held during the period from December 19 to 22, 2011, in the Democratic Republic of Algeria and dealt with the topic of Research and Analytical Skills in Media in Politics and was also dedicated to female personnel working in the field of visual media (television).
 

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