Aiming to equip media executives to advance their careers and contribute to the growth of strong local media enterprises, the Middle East and North Africa programme has been launched simultaneously with that in southeast Asia.

It combines skills development with peer mentoring, networking, and career coaching to provide a multi-dimensional approach to capacity building. 



In the Middle East programme, seven senior executives from print and online media outlets gathered in Cairo for business skills development and leadership workshops, peer mentoring sessions and one-on-one coaching. 

 

“The media professionals programme touches on all the aspects of a media business – the editorial side, leadership and management side, administrative side, and so on”, says participant Rania Al Malky, who is managing editor of egyptmonocle.com. “This is particularly relevant for me as my background is in journalism, but now that I’m starting my own initiative I have to become familiar with the various aspects of a media business.”

For Khalid Ateea, editor-in-chief of the ‘Roaya’ newspaper in Libya, an attraction is working with a peer group, “which makes the debates and the sessions all the more interesting,” he says.

The project, funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, supports professional development of a new generation of media leaders and contributes to the evolution of strong, independent media in emerging and developing markets.

The Middle East programme is running concurrently with a similar programme in Southeast Asia for executives from Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar.



“This is an exciting time for WAN-Ifra as we continue to pilot new approaches to media development and build on our current successes,” says deputy chief executive Larry Kilman. “While the Media Professionals Programme is unique to specific markets, we developed it by drawing on the best practices and lessons learned from ongoing projects elsewhere.

“We are developing and expanding strong models that have proven to deliver results.”

More on these projects can be found at http://www.wan-ifra.org/microsites/media-development