<b>A new project on media and climate is launched by the Azerbaijan Press Council (APC) and the UNESCO, which is called Preparation of Supportive Educational Supply Aiming Developing the Azerbaijani Journalists’ Professionalism on Issues of Global Climate Changes. Executive partner organizations are Azerbaijan National MaB (Man & Biosphere) Committee and the International Eurasia Press Fund (IEPF). The coordinator is IEPF chairman Umud Mirzayev.</b>
Aflatun Amashov, head of the APC says “This deal has to provide assistance to enhance professionalism of the Azerbaijan media on climate changes and educate general public on ecology problems by science journalism”.
The resembling project of Training of Broadcast Journalists to Strengthen Quality Coverage of Climate Change Issues had been powered in 2010 by and run by the APC and Azerbaijan National MaB (Man & Biosphere) Committee until April of 2011. Within that project, there managed round table training for three days in Baku for broadcast reporters. And, the result products were the Climate Changes and Ecological Stability Handbook and www.mediaclimate.org website that is managing by the IEPF now.
“Now this new project is following the previous one and aiming to produce training program basing on UNESCO’s educational products, as well as the abovementioned handbook” — Amashov said. He added that, during preparation of the program, it would be kept in consideration educational modules that outline peculiarities of media trainings in Azerbaijan and corresponding articles form the National Educational Strategy. The program is expected to be visual recourses for training organizations of Azerbaijan.
Experts in science, journalism and education gathered in the APC to discuss the preparation of execution mechanism and methodology of the project. At the present, operations of picking materials for the program are in progress.
In September, it is expected a conception paper to be put in consultation with experts from fields of science, media and education, as well as journalist students. Following into the November, the program will be going to be presented to the general access of usage before the project, running only in Baku, comes to end in December. The program will be in English, too.
Just to mention, the presentation event of handbook had been held with participation of director of the UNESCO Moscow Office Dendev Badarch and senior expert at the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education Svetlana Knyazeva.