Elena Madrazo Hegewisch, AECID Director, Mario Lubetkin, IPS Director General and Federico Mayor, IPS Chair.

More than sixty participants joined lively debates on the theme “Communication and Development: policies, networks and technologies”. The seminar was held 5 – 7 July in the University of Santander, Spain as part of a series of joint activities by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and the global news agency IPS Inter Press Service in 2010.

The seminar gave the opportunity to different actors in the field of communication and development cooperation to exchange their experiences and create coordination channels to improve public communication policy. Read more »

Raquel Martinez-Gomez, Carlos Alberdi and Mario Lubetkin

Since 2007 the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation(AECID) and the global news agency IPS Inter Press Service have a partnership aimed at putting development higher up media agendas. On 25 March, in Madrid, the partners launched a new publication and presented joint AECID-IPS initiatives for 2010 to a large audience of Spanish civil society, media and cooperation representatives.

The book “Communication and Development – Steps towards Coherence” includes contributions from renowned international analysts like Ignacio Ramonet, Marcial Murciano, Osa Maria Alfaro and Steffen Beitz, among others, reflecting on communication as a tool for promoting development and citizen’s education about values like solidarity. The book was presented by Carlos Alberdi, AECID Cultural and Scientific Relations Director, Mario Lubetkin, IPS Director General and Raquel Martinez-Gomez, the book’s coordinator. Read more »

Workshop participants with Dr. Mo Ibrahim (centre)

Sudanese journalists attending “Reporting Elections” training with IPS Africa have been urged to use their responsibility as journalists to tell the stories of ordinary people.

IPS Africa, with support from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, hosted a training workshop for South Sudanese print, radio and television journalists in Nairobi (Kenya) during 15-17 March 2010, to critically examine the role and responsibility of the media during elections reporting. Read more »

On International Women’s Day, IPS news agency talks to Iranian Nobel Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi and new UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova about their efforts to champion women. Both are in New York, with thousands of others, to review what progress women have made since the landmark Beijing Conference on Women, fifteen years ago.

An international team of IPS reporters is in New York where the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women is meeting to review the Beijing Platform of Action, with the IPS global network contributing local voices and viewpoints. Read more »

Almost 80 million smallholder farmers in Africa, supply about 80 percent of its food. In order for Africa to establish a prosperous and sustainable economic future, the voices of its farmers must be amplified.

To enable this, journalists from across the West Africa region attended a media workshop in Accra, Ghana, hosted by Inter Press Service IPS Africa on behalf of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

The workshop aimed to build the capacity of local journalists and editors from West and Central Africa to gain the skills and knowledge they need to report on the food crisis and how it can be solved, particularly with the contribution of smallholder farmers. Read more »