Project
Strengthening promotion of women’s rights (Kenya)
- Kenya
- October 2011
The project focused on the role of the media as a source of information for women at grassroots level, and as an influencing agent on government and institutional processes, promoting women’s voices and issues in the media. Additionally, the project aimed to build the capacity of advocacy groups to work with the media on behalf of women and other marginalized groups. The project succeeded in bringing women’s issues into the national debate ahead of the political reform process in Kenya. Most prominent was the monthly publication of the online newsletter Kenyan Woman which effectively framed women’s issues to more than 3 million subscribers. Kenyan Woman caught the attention of senior politicians, brought women’s stories to the attention of Kenya’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, and influenced mainstream media to increase their focus on women’s issues.
💡
- Women's empowerment
- Kenya
- October 2011
While the project succeeded in bringing stories from women at grassroots level into the Kenyan mainstream media, simple steps could have improved the coverage of women’s issues. Several women mentioned that they were unable to provide images to illustrate the issues they wanted to highlight because either they did not have cameras or they had not been trained to use them. To ensure sustainability and quality in the coverage of women’s issues, the grantee should include training in photojournalism and social media in future activities.
💡
- Women's empowerment
- Kenya
- October 2011
Training in media management successfully created links between NGO’s and relevant journalists in Kenya, and empowered NGO’s to frame their messages in a more media friendly way. Previously, NGO’s had a difficult time making their material relevant to journalists, and lacked access to media outlets. The NGO training was seen as vital in promoting coverage of women’s issues in the media.
💡
- Women's empowerment
- Kenya
- October 2011
In Kenya, community dialogues over the radio proved effective in raising rural women’s awareness about their rights. For example, many married women in conservative communities gave little thought to the fact that their husbands possessed their identity papers. Through radio shows highlighting women’s issues, women became aware of the fact that this practice deprived them of the possibility to vote. The project could have allocated more funds to radio journalism. In the evaluation report many interviewees stressed the importance of radio in rural areas in Kenya, as it reaches beneficiaries with low literacy rates in vernacular languages, without the need of internet access.
