Gender Watch Programme

Period: June 1998 – December 2003
Funded by: DIAKONIA

Aims of the project were to raise awareness level of local
journalists on gender equality and create female journalists
in the country. To achieve the goal News Network implemented
different activities like organising training workshop
in different district headquarters, writing articles and
introducing six-month fellowship programme for female
graduates on journalism. It may be mentioned that
percentage of female journalists in Bangladesh was less than 5 percent at that time. About 40 female graduates were trained. Most of these women took journalism as their profession and got jobs in important media houses. This created a huge impact in the field of journalism. During the project period about 350 journalists got better understanding and learned how to file good reports on gender issues.

Women Affairs Writer Development Programme

Period: April 1997 – June 1998
Funding Agency: CIDA

The prime objectives of the project were to train up a group of
journalists and give them better understanding on women rights, gender discrimination, domestic violence. They were motivated to publish more items on these issues for creating mass awareness. Achieving this, nine training workshops were organised in different parts of the country. More than two hundred journalists working in remote districts took part in the workshops. Series of items on women rights including their sufferings and effects of gender inequality were prepared and released to news media for publication. Some of them were released to international newspapers too and got good coverage particularly in South Asian media.

Development Programme for Investigative Journalism

Period: March 1997 – June 1998
Funding agency: Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) was the second donor that came forward and assisted the News Network in continuing the project ‘Development Programme for Investigative Journalism’, which was earlier funded by The Ford Foundation. The Objective of the project remained almost the same with only a few changes made in its activities.  This time News Network was able to expand its service to international media market by exchanging agreement with Women Feature Service, a New Delhi based international news-feature service.  Besides writing news-features News Network started organising skill development training programme for local journalists. This project helped News Network to come in the limelight of Bangladesh media and earned appreciation for its activities.

Development Programme for Investigative Journalism

Project Period: December 1995 – April 1997
Funding agency: Ford Foundation

In 1994 soon after the inception of News Network, The Ford Foundation was the first donor agency which stepped forward to assist News Network in accomplishing its goals. The Ford Foundation approved about 58,000 USD to implement a project on ‘Investigative journalism’. It was unique in a sense that such project was not undertaken in Bangladesh before. The objectives of the project were to promote investigative journalism, narrow down the information gaps and relate freedom of press with good governance. Under this programme, News Network produced a number of in-depth reports and news-features on various important issues such as human rights, violence against women, human trafficking, socio-economic and political aspects. These were also published in local newspapers and newsmagazines and drew attention from the media zone, the government and the policy makers.