By the end of August this year, the curtains will be drawn on the second cohort of the International Justice Mission (IJM-Ghana)’s Young Journalists Fellowship Programme (YJFP).
The programme aims to equip young journalists to proactively engage in reporting on human trafficking and the work of IJM.
It is part of IJM Ghana’s efforts to increase awareness of human trafficking through the use of mass media and to maintain a strategic relationship with journalists and media houses.
For the first cohort of the fellowship programme, IJM empowered 10 young and vibrant journalists from various media houses in the print and broadcast media spaces through the YJFP.
The journalists came from various regions in Ghana, specifically from destination and source communities known for trafficking. These young journalists affiliated with top media houses proactively engaged in reporting human trafficking and the work of IJM over their one-year fellowship program.
For the second cohort, 16 fellows from print, TV, radio, and online media houses were taken through eight months of intensive training on child trafficking, which better positioned them to report on the issue effectively.
The fellowship began with a one-day workshop in December introducing the fellows to IJM’s work, the human trafficking law, the role of journalists in ending human trafficking, and how to write creatively as a journalist. These sessions were facilitated by an attorney from IJM, Shamima Muslim, Convener of the Alliance for Women in Media Africa (AWMA), and Edwin Appiah, an Investigative Journalist at The Fourth Estate.
Over the course of the fellowship programme, the fellows participated in seven online coaching sessions and cohort discussions. Some topics that were covered in the trainings included trauma-informed reporting, survivor interviewing skills, creative writing, the role of journalists in ending human trafficking, media sustainability, excellence in journalism; what it takes, ethics in human trafficking reportage, and the nature of human trafficking in Ghana.
The facilitators for the various sessions included staff from IJM, a social worker from IJM, the Ghana Survivor Network Lead, and practitioners from the media industry. Practitioners from the media industry who facilitated sessions during the monthly online coaching included Ernest Kojo Manu, Maxwell Agbagba, and Raymond Smith from Afrimass.