Community Media Empowering Program (m-Com)

MINUTES

3^rd CENTRAL MANAGEMENT MEETING

4-5 July 2013

Paris, France

Partners presented of recent local activities/deliverables and updates on the extended needs analysis:

The following partners presented updates from their local activities and the results of the extended needs analysis in the field of Community Media. As a follow-up from the Madrid meeting where partners presented the results of the needs analysis.

The partners that were present during the meeting are as following:

- CCMC (Cyprus)

- STOWARZYSZENIE CENTRUM INICJATYW EDUKACYJNO-SPOLECZNYCH (Poland)

- Cibervoluntarios (Spain)

- E-Seniors (France)

- DIMITRA (Greece)

- Comunicareilsociale.it (Italy)

- Marmara Educators Association (Turkey)

Partners Needs Analysis Results Presentations 1 –

All the partners expressed that they have completed the needs analysis in the extended time. As during the Madrid meeting all partners agreed to extend the time period in order to reach a better number of feedbacks. Following priority areas were added by three partners:

Deliverables and Needs Analysis result from - Marmara Educators Association (Turkey)

Marmara Educators Association have uploaded the best practices to the dropbox folder, and prepared and sent the M-Com meetings evaluation: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7MVFSX7.

The priority training areas that came out from their needs analysis were:

• Facebook and Twitter training
• Working with the mainstream media.

Deliverables and Needs Analysis result from -E-Seniors (France)

Since the meeting in Madrid, the E-Senior team uploaded the presented good practices to dropbox and also organized and coordinate the meeting in Paris:

The priority training areas that came out from their needs analysis were:

As E-Seniors is starting to work with the local town hall, and with the mainstream media, video production training stands out as a priority for the beneficiaries of the organization. Than consecutively:

• Working with the media
• Media Crisis Management

Deliverables and Needs Analysis result from -DIMITRA (Greece)

DIMITRA also received more feedback during the period between the Madrid meeting and Paris meeting. In addition, to previously presented results DIMITRA expressed that their beneficiaries would utilized training on video-production focusing on documentary film making for awareness raising.

STOWARZYSZENIE CENTRUM INICJATYW EDUKACYJNO-SPOLECZNYCH (Poland) Presentation on Best Practices in Poland.

The Polish team presented the best practices from Poland. The presentation will be uploaded to dropbox folder.

Discussion on training platform development based on Needs Analysis

All the partners have agreed to go ahead with the determined priority areas. The decision is also to learn from best practices and utilize the training materials that are available online and free.

Each partner will be responsible for translating the training materials that have the most priority into their languages.

Update on M-Com Website

Orestis Tringides, GB member of CCMC will create a section on activities and events that will be supported by audio-visual materials.

Priority Training Topics:

Newsletter Creation

Social Media and Online Activism

Video Production

Effective Blogging

Working with the Media

Strategic Communication, Campaigning and Advocacy

DELIVERABLES TIMELINE
TASK	ORGANISATION	DATE OF COMPLETION
Training sample template to be sent	Marmara Educators Association	14 July 2013 -deliverable has been submitted since-
Training materials relevant to the topic to be sent	CCMC	26 July 2013
Evaluation of the Project	Marmara Educators Association	14 July 2013 -deliverable has been completed since-
Modification of the training materials based on local realities and needs	All Partners	5 September 2013
Submission of the modified training materials	All Partners	1 October 2013
Uploading all the materials to the website	CCMC	15 October 2013

The schedule of mobility is as following:

Italy (Bari) 14-15 November 2013

Greece (Larissa) 6-7 February 2014

Turkey (Istanbul) 26-27 June 2014

The following initial need that was identified during the kick-off meeting in Cyrus has strengthened with the results of the needs analysis. For that reason it is relevant to re-mention, with additional information.

I) Traditional Media Skills – mainly for a civil society audience, all partners agreed that civil society organisations (smaller NGOs in particular) are in need of media skills training that will enable them to communicate more effectively with the wider public. These could range for writing a simple press release, to more technical skills such as video production and editing;

II) Social Media and Online Open-Source Tools – with the opening up of the Internet, new tools and skills-sets are now available to activists and citizens in general to use in order to communicate more effectively online. These tools are growing at a very rapid rate, and there is a need to provide training on online networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, internet publishing via blogs, as well as information sharing facilities such as Doodle and Dropbox. These skills will also strengthen collaboration between NGOs both nationally and internationally to work towards common goals;

III) Linking with the Mainstream Media – Community Media is an incubator for individuals to work in the media environment. So at a point in time where Community Media is not recognized or readily accessible to groups within society, skills need to be developed for different audiences on how to interact with the mainstream media in order to get their message out there. A good example of an activity in this area was DIMITRA’s work with well-known journalists in not only training people in e.g. interview skills, but also sensitizing them about what community media/journalism can do for media pluralism;

The meeting was concluded with the agreement that different fields of community media will be included with the best practices collected from different countries based on the strengths on each field. The categories will be determined after all the needs analysis is concluded.