ILEIA Newsletter Vol. 11 No. 1 p. 10

Workshop on rural journalism

Bernard Guri

As part of her human resource development programme, the Ecumenical Association for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (ECASARD) organised a workshop in October last year for 20 members of the network. The goal was to create a culture of writing among members and to provide them with simple writing skills that will help them articulate and document their field experiences in publishable articles. The workshop was facilitated by resource persons from the school of Communication Studies of the University of Ghana.

ECASARD, like any other network, is a loose organisation that thrives on the exchange of experiences, expertise and resources among members without compromising the individual identities of the member organisations. To facilitate this networking process, ECASARD, since 1992, identified the need to establish a newsletter as a medium for free flow of information among member organisations and other like-minded NGOs in Ghana and abroad.

ECASARD also saw the need to encourage members to document their experiences in international and regional newsletters such as ILEIA, Baobab and Acacia, so as to share their experiences with others. As a working principle, ECASARD normally sets up a task force to tackle any specific problem that arises. A task force was therefore set up in 1993 with the mandate to set up the newsletter and also solicit articles from members for publication in the newsletters of our partners.

Documenting experiences

In spite of all genuine efforts, by the middle of 1994 the task force had not made any headway. However, from the reports of another task force that was set up to do a follow-up monitoring of a workshop on sustainable agriculture that was organised earlier, it was realised that member organisations had a wealth of experience. The tendency, however, has been for members to look up to their external (donor) partners for innovations while lots of it abounds in their immediate neighbour projects.

At an Executive Committee meeting, the situation was re-assessed and it was concluded that the difficulty to get members to document their rich experiences was because:

• members, like most rural development workers, have not developed the culture of writing;
• most members do not have writing skills;
• members are not sufficiently motivated to document their experiences.

It was therefore decided to tackle the problem form the roots, that is, to eliminate the identified bottlenecks. Hence the workshop on Rural Journalism. Two representatives selected by each of the seven regional networks that form ECASARD and all Executive members took part in the workshop. They are expected to organise similar workshops for the other members in their own region.

The workshop introduced participants to the principles of Development Journalism as opposed to conventional journalism. It also dealt with topics such as what is fit to print, the structure of an article, elements of good writing and tips on farm and environmental journalism. The workshop ended with a hands-on exercise to write model articles on real work experiences of the participants. This article is a product of that exercise!

Members tell their own story

The need for free flow of expertise in any network cannot be overemphasised. It is, however, equally important to empower members to be able to tell their own stories. The tendency has been for so called professionals to talk on their behalf of rural communities. Most often, such professionals twist these messages to suit their theoretical models. Providing skills to rural workers to be able to document their experiences is an important task that should not be overlooked in networks that involve rural organisations. It is the only way by which interest can be maintained among members.

Based on this introductory workshop, ECASARD has drawn a long-term strategy to motivate members to begin to document their experiences. The newsletter, which will be called "The Sustainable Farmer" shall be launched by January 1995. "The Sustainable Farmer" will provide information in many areas including the following:

• innovations in sustainable agriculture and rural development;
• field activities of individual member projects and the regional networks;
• activities of the national executive;
• current events in agriculture and rural development in Ghana and elsewhere.

Bern Guri, ECASARD, PO Box 68, Madina, Accra, Ghana.

ECASARD is an ecumenical network in Southern Ghana which aims at promoting the principles and practice of Low-External-Input and Sustainable Agriculture. We will like to share experiences with other like-minded networks especially in the West African sub-region. Any correspondence should be addressed to: Mr. Bernard Y. Guri (chairman), ECASARD, PO Box 68, Madina, Accra, Ghana.

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