More Journalist Workshops

A few weeks back Janet O’Connor once again joined us in Kathmandu to conduct two half-day workshops for women journalists. This time the topic was feature writing which proved to be a far more challenging course than the previous journalism basics Janet had given.

The workshops were attended by around 25 journalists from in and around Kathmandu covering a range of backgrounds including newspapers, radio, TV, magazines, freelance and student.

The first workshop covered a range of topics including ethics in journalism, differences between hard news and features, different types of introductions and their importance, the importance of structure, and the morning finished with an exercise in mind mapping the structure for a feature article.

The second workshop covered feature analysis, editing and the importance of word choice and being economical with words, and finished with some exercises and discussion on interviews. This last part raised a lot of interest and questions as interviewing is something that many in the group found difficult. Janet had plenty of practical suggestions for helping them to better prepare for and get the most out of their interviews.

All of the topics covered in the workshop really challenged the attendees as many of them had little formal training, instead learning 'on the job'. Also, the general standard of feature writing in Nepal is not high and so it was a great help for the participants to be exposed to examples from international publications as well as having the opportunity to discuss their ideas and raise questions with an experienced journalist.

We must thank Janet profusely for all of her hard work in putting the course together as well as travelling all the way to Kathmandu to share it with us!

Lots happening in Kathmandu

Just a quick post as I have been off the air for a while due to internet difficulties here in Nepal! Bec and I have been here for the last 10 days or so and in that time we have been run off our feet with volunteers, workshops, meetings and lots of exciting things being planned for next year.

I'll be posting updates on each of these things in the coming days. In brief, we have had a volunteer run a two-day workshop for women journalists, two volunteers run a two-day workshop for Maths teachers, witnessed the graduation of the first group of girls from our pilot Dream Centre, finalised the location for the next Dream Centre, hosted a workshop on dreaming for graduates of our Daisy Chains project, the list goes on!

Stay tuned...

Women Journalists' Workshop

Last weekend saw the inaugural Workshop for Women Journalists which we ran in conjunction with WWJ (Working Women Journalists). Janet O’Connor, sub-editor with the Financial Review in Australia, traveled to Kathmandu to conduct the training which was attended by 18 women from various media backgrounds. The course ran over 2 half days, covering topics such as basic story construction, editing, investigative reporting and freelancing.


The passion and enthusiasm shown by the attendees was infectious, especially as Janet had them turning nursery rhymes into hard news stories and other adventurous activities! It was surprising to see that despite in many cases significant education and experience and being able to recite the theory, the women found it challenging to apply some of the principles being taught. This is a problem reflective of the education system in Nepal, where the method of teaching does not place any focus on comprehension or application but rather only on memorising facts.

The position of women in journalism is indicative of the wider situation for women in Nepal in that they are not given the same opportunities and pay as men and often struggle to be recognized as experienced, credible journalists. The women journalists we have spoken with tend to want to report on issues close to them such as children and social matters and these are things that desperately need wider coverage to raise awareness in Nepal. We will be continuing to work with WWJ to develop more expansive programs to help up skill these wonderful, inspiring women so they can help increase awareness of the issues facing women in Nepal.

Thank you so much to Janet for stepping outside her comfort zone and running this program. It was a great success and we hope to be able to continue to run more of these types of programs with her in the future.


We must give a big ‘thank you’ to Equal Access here as well. They are an NGO (non-government organisation) working in Nepal, as well as other countries, to provide greater access to information and education through community based radio programs. Equal Access provided the use of their conference room and in-house catering facilities for the 2 day course and this was a fantastic help.

Women Journalists' Forum

It feels like a long time since my last blog but that is partly due to our being so busy here in Kathmandu! So, to bring you all up to speed, let me start with Monday this week.

As I had mentioned in previous entries, we have been joined in Kathmandu by one of our good friends, Janet. Janet has worked in journalism in Australia for many years and has been very eager to use her skills to help women journalists in Nepal. Journalism for women in Nepal is similar to many other professions in that it is much more difficult to be heard whether from a career prospective or simply just in the content of your work. The problems of access to education and family and social pressures also make journalism a challenging pursuit.

We invited a group of around 10 women who all shared a passion for making their voices heard to a round table discussion on the issues facing women in this industry. Janet, Rebecca and I met with the women in the ‘back room’ of a café in New Baneshwor and spent a lively 2 hours discussing the main issues they face, their hopes for the future and the areas in which they felt they needed the most help and support from us. Some of the recurring themes included their strong desire to hear about Janet’s experience of journalism in Australia and the prospects for women there. All of the women felt that this type of discussion was really inspiring and motivating for them. They were also keen to have an impromptu class on the basics of constructing a story and looking at some examples of the way news is reported across different publications in Australia. Janet came well prepared on this front and had even brought copies of some different newspapers from Australia to illustrate her points which the women enjoyed.

The tone of the class and the feedback afterwards was overwhelingly in favour of us working with Janet to setup a formal training course and in fact a number of the women enquired as to whether Janet would be available next week to start the training! This is testament to Janet’s demonstrated knowledge in this area as well as her presentation technique and we are immensely grateful to her for putting herself ‘out there’ and giving this a go. Of course now the real work for all of us begins as Janet is going to work on preparing a course that will give maximum benefit to the women whilst we will be working on the logistics of running the course probably some time in March next year.

Some unexpected benefits of the forum also came in the form of a number of the women meeting each other for the first time and vowing to keep in touch and perhaps even form an ongoing support group in order that they might work together on particular issues and projects. This would be a fantastic outcome as we always try to keep sustainability in mind when developing these projects – if these women can take their experience and training we provide and use them to promote their causes and help others to do the same, then who knows what the future might hold for Nepal?!

Stay tuned for updates as this project takes shape…