Research on the reveals that less than a quarter of all news articles on migration or refugee issues mention a refugee or migrant, and far fewer directly quote them. Kathy Dobson and Ghadah Alrasheed, Interim co-Directors of ALiGN Media Lab, became more aware of this issue after they visited Nairobi last year and met with groups of refugees and saw how far they were far from the stereotype of “helpless victims” propagated by media. The refugees who Ghadah and Kathy met were an impressive group of people, very active in their communities and generously contributing to their host community. That is the reason the ALiGN Media Lab will be hosting a workshop this week as part of a series on media training. The workshop,“Storytelling with Impact”, will bring together a group of refugees from Kakuma Camp in Kenya to discuss how to pitch and amplify their voices, experiences and complelling stories to mainstream media. The workshop will also include training on how to share these stories across multiple digital forms. The participants from  Kakuma Camp are from different parts of the world, including Somalia, Burundi, and Congo. Through this collaboration, Ghadah and Kathy hope to share practical media strategies with the refugees to amplify their voices, gain a deeper understanding of what makes stories stand out, and thus deepen the coverage of their important issues.

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On 11 April 2019 the ALiGN Media Lab held a “Public Sector Writing” at the School of Journalism and Communication Studies, �Ӱ�ԭ�� University.

Organized by Ghadah Alrasheed (Postdoctoral Fellow, ALIGN Media Lab, �Ӱ�ԭ�� University) and Aden Dur-e-Aden (PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto), the workshop was led by 4 presenters* who have first-hand experiences in public sector writing.

• Suzanne Waldman (Research Analyst, Defence Research and Development Canada’s Centre for Security Science)
• Brianna Botchwey (PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto)
• Analyst, Government of Canada
• Batoul Hreiche (Policy Analyst, Public Safety Canada).

This 3-hour workshop was attended by undergraduate and graduate students from different departments, who are interested in working for the public sector or in learning how to influence and communicate more efficiently with policy makers. During the workshop, the presenters introduced the students to different types of writing products needed for work within any government department agency: policy papers, briefing notes, slide decks, and public communications. The participants were engaged in interactive activities to help them apply the knowledge and skills they have received from the presenters and were provided with feedback by the presenters to improve their public sector writing skills.

* All of the presenters attended in their personal capacity, not as representatives of their organizations or government departments.

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On 3 April 2019, the ALiGN Media Lab held a “Pathways to Digital Literacy“workshop for the middle grade students (7th and 8th) at

Organized by Ghadah Alrasheed (ALiGN postdoctoral fellow), in four 60-minute sessions, participants learned about media literacy and media production. Two media literacy sessions, facilitated by Nasreen Rajani (ALiGN researcher and PhD candidate in Communication & Media Studies), focused on critical new media literacy, digital values and ethics, and fake news detection. Throughout the sessions, students were engaged in exercises and games to help them critically understand new media texts, images, and contexts and learn some fact-checking skills.

Facilitated by Amir Yaghchi (Computer Science student), another two sessions were designed to enhance the students’ media production and application of technical skills through the use of apps such as Google Spreadsheets. During the sessions, students learned how to enhance their skills of their data reporting, visualizing, and analyzing.

…

Here is what the Principal of Abraar School got to say about the workshop:

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