AMARC: Human Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean

The AMARC ALC's Púlsar News Agency offers community and independent broadcasters a complete range of information on issues of citizen interest on its web page, three daily e-mails to their 3200 subscribers, coverage and specials campaigns. The setting up of a correspondent net is one of the biggest deficits of the last years. Therefore, this project aims to lead a training process that will allow new community journalists to receive a specific training on Human Rights and journalistic production and join the Púlsar's correspondent net. To that end, we propose to carry out a workshop, virtual exchanges, design of a manual, the connection of local communication projects with the regional ones so as to increase the quality and quantity of available news and audios in the agency, to carry out seven special reports and two Human Rights researches in Latin America and the Caribbean. The immediate objective is training a first group composed of 7 community journalists (representing the 6 sub regions of Latin America and the Caribbean and the AMARC ALC's Women's net) in journalistic production for the defence of Human Rights, beginning with an analysis of the Latin American and Caribbean's realities. The development objective is to contribute to actions and reflections on defence of Human Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean benefiting the marginalized groups. Project Outputs will include: a Púlsar News Agency correspondent net composed of people representing every Latin America and Caribbean sub region and the AMARC ALC Women's network (7 communicators in the first phase and 14 in the second one); an analysis of the regional context focused on Human Rights as an input for journalistic work; a 4-day training workshop on journalist training and analysis of the Latin-American social context related to Human Rights will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina for 7 community journalists representing the 6 AMARC ALC's sub regions in Latin America and the Caribbean, and one member of the AMARC ALC Women's net; a journalist with experience in Human Rights and community communication will be invited to deepen the topics dealt with; more news and audios related to Human Rights on Pulsar News Agency for the AMAR ALC associates and subscribers; seven special local reports and 2 surveys carried out by the members of Pulsar news agency net of correspondent, that will published on Pulsar's web page.

Location and contacts
Project place: 
Buenos Aires

Project country:

Project region:

Project details
Year when project approved: 
2008
IPDC Bureau meeting nº: 
52

Implementation status :

Project evaluated:

Project scope:

IPDC Priority:

Beneficiary
Beneficiary name: 
World Association of Community Broadcasting Latin America and the Caribbean (AMARC ? ALC)
Beneficiary description: 
The World Association of Community Broadcasting (AMARC) was founded in 1983 in Montreal. The Latin America and Caribbean office was founded in 1990. Púlsar News Agency is one of the programmes developed by AMARC ALC to democratise communications in the continent. Púlsar's objective is to facilitate to community radios the access to accurate and important information through the new technologies. Púlsar was the first important initiative associating community radio stations and the Internet.

Beneficiary country:

Beneficiary website: 
http://alc.amarc.org/
Budget
Approved budget: 
US$18 590.00
Budget code: 
354-RLA-5071

Source of funds:

UNESCO
Responsible UNESCO Regional advisers: 
Rosa Gonzalez, r.gonzalez@unesco.org;

UNESO Field Office:

Follow-up and achievments
Summary of the project implementation: 
The first report was received on 31 December 2008. The training workshop was organized and convened as planned in November 2008 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, based on a training programme developed along the lines established by the project. It dealt with the following subjects: analysis of the Latin American and Caribbean context with relation to human rights; b) journalistic training: criteria for news publishing, handling of information sources, journalistic writing for radio; c) perspectives: human rights; freedom of expression and right to information, gender equality, etc; d) correspondents: decentralized work dynamics. The network of correspondents was set up and a working methodology agreed upon. The correspondents' feature stories were distributed throughout the region from December 2008 to August 2009 on a weekly basis. The Style Manual on concrete writing style guidelines, use of informative sources, technical aspects andan brief analysis of the Latin America landscape was prepared, validated, printed and distributedthroughout the region and posted in Púlsar's webpage. The project succeeded in improving the working capacity of the pulsar news agency and its correspondents' ability to cover human rights issues in a professional manner. It is now technically and administratively terminated.
Documents
Full project description: 
AMARC - Human Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean.pdf
Full implementation report: 
Reg. Project - Pop Correspondent - Human Rights in Latin America and Caribbean.pdf