From documentarians in Istanbul, to citizen journalists in Iran and India, we identify, reach, train, and enable men and women who are eager to tell the stories of their communities.  Our training adprogrammes are rigorous because no career in the media is sustainable without a craft.   And we continue to support and enable them because no writer, film-maker or artist can work in a vacuum.

We have high expectations for our trainees and mentees because we have worked for some of the most demanding outfits, including The BBC, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Guardian, HBO, The Discovery Channel and National Geographic.  Our participants rise to the challenge of our demanding standards because they know that there is an audience for quality story-telling and having an audience is uniquely powerful.  

Our training always begins with the fundamental importance of accuracy, both of reporting and representation.  We place great emphasis on fact-checking and ethics in the battle for authority, during what are often crowded, noisy and sometimes dangerous public debates.  By giving our participants clear guidelines and templates for constructing stories, we try to get their work published as soon as possible so that they can develop confidence and their critical faculties.  Our training and development channels include live events and workshops, online and phone.  Wherever possible we try to turn our alumni into trainers in their own right so that we're constantly building capacity and enabling strong peer networks.  We also encourage correspondents to pitch their stories to major news and publishing outlets and train them to pitch and sell their story ideas.

We are more than happy to collaborate with other NGOs and media development organisations in training programmes, and we have worked with BBC Media Action and IREX.