Pilot Media Training

General information:

Women's Infoteka has been conducting PR and media trainings in Croatia since the beginning of 2000 in the war struck areas of Croatia, mostly in the counties of Slavonija and Baranja.
Within this project, the training team from Women's Infoteka provided basic and advanced trainings for over 300 women active in the Croatian nongovernmental sector and also for women MPs and women politicians active in Croatian political parties.

The project was primarily designed for women's grassroot organization, but it has in the meantime been developed in several directions. Nevertheless, its overall goal remains as follows:

• Training and encouraging women activists to use skills to speak publicly, to actively participate in the public and political life of the country, in particular in decision making bodies of public debating and skills to enter existing media channels and create/develop independent media
• Development of media strategies and campaigning for women’s NGOs to draw attention and launch women’s political issues into mass media. Thus developing ways of introducing women’s issues and gender democracy into mainstream media, into public sphere in general, aiming for introducing gender sensitive policies on the local and national level
• Empowering women to become public agents of change toward gender democracy
• Supporting development of a women’s cross-regional media network

Background information on situation in the Republic of Croatia:

A general problem in Croatia is under-developed democracy despite the changes of the regime after the elections of January 3, 2000.
Moreover, the fall of the authoritarian government made it clear how poor the prerequisites for a democracy really are in the country. People voted for opposition not because the previous government was chauvinistic and authoritarian, but because it was not able to stop the collapse of economy, moreover it was perceived as the main cause of the collapse. The governing system is still centralized and local communities are subordinated and subdued to the central power. Namely, recently the government decentralized only some functions in education, health and some other domains, but they are still dependent on money from the central funds. Inter-ethnic relations are still characterized by distrust, discrimination, and potential conflict. Discrimination and lack of recognition also characterize gender-relations. In short, 'democratic changes' in political power still have to be followed by substantial changes in prevailing political culture.
One of the key problems in that respect is a very poor quality of public information and almost complete absence of public debate on burning issues. Another problem is the centralized system of information and lack of information and knowledge exchange. Apart from low professional standards in Croatian journalism, civic actors as potential provokers and carriers of such debate are often not aware of importance of raising the issues in the country-wide public rather than exclusively in the capital where all political institutions are concentrated. Policy makers, decision makers, journalists are in turn limited to following political events within the narrow circle of professional party-politicians and governmental institutions.
Particularly, other parts of the country and regions which were directly affected by the war, like Eastern Slavonija and Krajina, are on the margin of the national information system and thereby cut off in terms of equal participation in the national politics. This is in fact the main obstacle of efforts to democratize the society in general and particularly to re-establish the multi-ethnic society; that also poses a threat of continued conflict. As women often act as bridges in processes of reconciliation, their active involvement in public life, particularly in the sense of inclusiveness of all parts of the country on the equal basis, will help the society in general. However, activities of their organizations in local communities are not sufficiently public-oriented either in their local communities or on the national level, and given the insensitivity of media, their public visibility has remained rather low.
The project «Women and Media: Gender Perspective» directly addresses all of the emphasized issues and problems.

Project efforts 2002-2003:

In 2002, based on experiences in developing a particular gender sensitive know-how, the training team of Women's Infoteka prepared and published a media manual «PR Manual for NGOs». Feel free to send us any inquiries about orders and further questions about the Manual via e-mail.
In the period of 2002-2003, Women's Infoteka extended its training mission across borders, aiming to achieve cross-regional cooperation throughout the states of the Former Yugoslavia.
Thus, in Neum, Bosnia and Herzegovina 2 trainings were organized in cooperation with the Heinrich Boell Stiftung, Regional Office Sarajevo. Trainings were intended for HBS scholarship holders (graduate students).
Furthermore, we organized a training programme in Serbia and Montenegro in cooperation with the network Women in Black, Serbia (2 trainings held in Belgrade and Totovo Selo).
According to needs expressed by Croatian Roma initiatives, Ženska infoteka organized a pilot training for Roma organizations (Vinkovci, April 2003) working in the field of minority rights.
The project «Women and Media: Gender Perspective» has been supported by the Norwegian People’s Aid, Oslo, Kvinna till Kvinna, Sweden, Heinrich Boell Stiftung, Regional Office Sarajevo and Open Society Institute, Croatia.