APIA (Pasifika Media Association / Pacific Media Watch): The board of directors of Pasifika Media Association (PasiMA) is gathering in Apia this week for two main purposes.
First, to take part in work sessions with the team implementing its first major project entitled “Pasifika Trainer” and second, for their second annual board meeting.
Both the work sessions and the board meeting will be held at the Samoa Observer offices at Vaitele starting tomorrow, the chairman of the PasiMA board and Samoa Observer’s editor-in-chief, Savea Sano Malifa, said in an email.
He is returning home following the International Press Institute’s (IPI) annual congress earlier this month in Trinidad and Tobago, the Port of Spain, which he and Samoa Observer publisher Muliaga Jean Malifa attended.
“Pasifika Trainer” is a programme of web-based training resources designed for regional media professionals.
It was designed and is being developed by IT and journalism professionals who are going to be in Apia this week.
The project’s core team leaders are:
· PasiMA’s administrative director, Ana Currie, who is providing managerial support;
· David Leeming of Honiara, who heads the IT development branch of the project team;
· and Dev Nadkarni, of Auckland, who leads the content development branch.
They are working with other journalists and technical consultants around the Pacific to produce quality content and an effective interactive platform for the web-based resources.
The project work sessions will commence tomorrow and continue throughout the week.
The PasiMA board meeting will take place on Thursday.
The “Pasifika Trainer Project” was designed by the PasiMA board when it was established in Apia in August 2010.
It was conceived as a key element in what it intended would be PasiMA’s regional capacity-building and training operations for the benefit of the region’s working journalists.
PasiMA was established by independent regional media owners, operators and principals, with a vision of creating an association that is forward-looking and responsive to the real-time concerns of media professionals in the Pacific region.
Its senior officials are respected independent media editors and publishers with strong backgrounds in press freedom issues.
The online journalism “Pacific Trainer” programme is offered not as an academic curriculum, but rather as a “go-to” source for working journalists and media operators in the Pacific.
It incorporates three basic elements, namely:
· Media business development
· New media technologies
· Investigative journalism
These, employed effectively together, should create a dynamic and widely accessible training approach for regional media professionals.
The “Pasifika Trainer Project” is funded by the British High Commission in Honiara, the Solomon Islands. It is scheduled to be launched in November 2012.
The PasiMA board meeting will be on Thursday, July 19. Some of the major topics to be discussed there are:
· Report and presentations from the project team on the Pasifika Trainer Project
· Discussion of how the use of this training concept by regional journalists can be effectively promoted
· Investigative journalism: strategies for its effective use as a means to fight political corruption in regional governments in the interest of the public
· Membership
· Accounts and remittances of funds
· Scheduling a general membership meeting
· Board elections
· “This is My Village” project funded by the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
· Regional partnerships
· Re-cap of PasiMA vision from December 2011 meeting
· PasiMA: Into the future – a roundtable discussion
More information about PasiMA
MEDIA CONTACT
Savea Sano Malifa
email: saveamalifa@gmail.com
(685) 770-2250
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Pacific Media Watch
