Dec 5 2020: Celebrate The Disruptors This Holiday Season

This week’s highlights

  • We need YOU to help us Celebrate the Disruptors this Holiday Season
  • Sign up to our next webinar ‘MMIWG & Media: Getting it Right’
  • This Human Rights Day, JHR Releases New Microsite with Tools to Fight Misinformation
  • JHR Team Leader Siyabulela Mandela’s Work Awarded by Nelson Mandela University
  • #16DaysOfActivism in the DRC for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
  • Deadline approaching! Paid Opportunities for Indigenous Journalists to Work with Media Organizations Across Canada 

Help JHR #CelebrateTheDisruptors of 2020 this Holiday Season

 

THANK YOU to everyone who helped us Celebrate the Disruptors this #GivingTuesday! 

As this year’s #GivingTuesday came to an end, we were well on our way to our holiday giving campaign goal of $30,000 and as of this morning, we are even closer!  

BUT WE ARE NOT THERE YET! Click here to donate TODAY.

We still need YOU to help us Celebrate the Disruptors this holiday season. As you all read, we launched our campaign celebrating the great work of Sandra Bashengazi from DRC. 

STAY TUNED this week as we continue to celebrate more JHR Disruptors! 

Can you guess who we are going to celebrate next week?

 

Sign up to our next webinar ‘MMIWG & Media: Getting it Right’

From Tina Fontaine to the MMIWG inquiry’s finding of genocide, the media coverage itself has often dominated public discourse around the stories of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. However, the media has also been instrumental in bringing these important stories to the fore. What does it look like when the media gets it right? How can journalists and media organizations best cover the stories of MMIWG? 

This Human Rights Day 2020 (December 10), join the discussion with panelists Michèle Audette, Sheila North, Karyn Pugliese and moderator Brandi Morin.

Sign up here.

 

JHR Releases New Microsite with Tools to Fight Misinformation

This week, Journalists for Human Rights launched a new website with tools to fight the spread of mis and disinformation: jhr.ca/truth-matters. The launch of the microsite coincides with the release of a new report by disinformation expert Marcus Kolga, who featured on JHR’s webinar, also available on the microsite, with a panel of media literacy experts and journalists. The report discusses the results and implications of JHR’s initial pilot fighting misinformation and citizen preparedness in Canada. The initial pilot program was supported by Canadian Heritage and ran from August of 2019 to July of 2020.

“As the Canadian information environment becomes increasingly polluted with false and often extreme narratives, it has become critically important that Canadians are equipped with the digital media literacy skills that will allow them to navigate the expanding infodemic. The overwhelmingly positive impact that JHR’s digital media literacy training webinars had on participant confidence and their ability to spot mis/disinformation was significant, and clearly indicates that broader training can help build citizen resilience against this growing problem.” – Marcus Kolga, author of the ‘Canadian Media and Citizen Preparedness to Combat Disinformation’ report.


Click here to visit the site.

JHR Team Leader Siyabulela Mandela’s Work Recognized by Nelson Mandela University 

JHR’s South Sudan Team Leader, Siyabulela Mandela, is being celebrated by Nelson Mandela University. He is a recipient of the Rising Star Award for his work with JHR to fight misinformation on COVID-19. 

“At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the international media development organisation Journalists for Human Rights approached Siyabulela to head up its South Sudan operations as country director. His role was to work with local media organizations, to ensure health information on COVID-19 was accurately reported. Based on his successes, he has since been appointed as the Regional Project Coordinator for East and Southern Africa and is heading up a project titled Mobilizing media to fight COVID-19.” – Nelson Mandela University.

‘Nelson Mandela sets forth a broader purpose of education, as “a greatest weapon we can use to change the world”. It is through education that I am able to continue Madiba’s legacy and contribute in my own way in changing the world.’ – Siyabulela Mandela. 

Listen to more of Siyabulela’s work here discussing JHR’s COVID-19 project in South Sudan with CTV’s Lisa LaFlamme.

 

#16DaysOfActivism in the DRC for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

                                           

Photo Credit: JHR DRC, Left – Kinshasa, Right – Bukavu

During the #16DaysOfActivism for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, JHR DRC organized radio forums in Kinshasa and Bukavu. In Kinshasa JHR hosted an interactive on-air forum to bring awareness on the issue of increased domestic violence during COVID-19. The  forum brought together Women’s Rights advocates, Joseph Gode Kayembe, President of the Africa Zone League for the Defense of the Rights of Children, Dr. Sahdy Marisha, Coordinator of the Association of Health Professionals, and Anny Umba Situ, homemaker. The forum had an estimated audience member of 8 million.

In Bukavu, JHR held an on-air forum on impunity and Gender-Based Violence at Radio Mama that reached over 7,000,000 listeners. The forum brought together representatives from CSO organizations and legal experts to advocate for better enforcement of GBV laws. Impunity remains the norm and justice the exception in terms of prosecuting GBV in the DRC.

 

Call for Expressions of Interest: Bursaries and Internships Supporting Indigenous Voices 

JHR’s Indigenous Reporters program is currently seeking expressions of interest from emerging Indigenous journalists in Canada to work on bursary and internship opportunities available with leading media organizations across Canada.

The bursaries and internships are open to Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, Inuit) youth working or seeking work in media, or currently enrolled in a media or journalism program at a Canadian post-secondary institution.

Deadline to apply: December 7, 2020. Find all information here

 

 Land Acknowledgement

We wish to acknowledge the land on which the Journalists for Human Rights’ head office operates and recognize the longstanding relationships Indigenous nations have with these territories. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Tkaronto (Toronto) is in the Dish with One Spoon Territory and is home to Indigenous peoples from many nations across Turtle Island who continue to care for this land today. 
To read more on JHR’s land acknowledgement, click here.