Foundation trains 252 Nigerian women in journalism

An international foundation for girl-child education, Dawood Global Foundation (DGF) has organised a three-day training programme for would-be young female journalists in Nigeria. While addressing journalists at the event in Lagos, DGF President, Tara Uzra Dawood, said ‎the idea behind training of young female Nigerians in journalism is part of the larger Educate A Girl […]

An international foundation for girl-child education, Dawood Global Foundation (DGF) has organised a three-day training programme for would-be young female journalists in Nigeria.
While addressing journalists at the event in Lagos, DGF President, Tara Uzra Dawood, said ‎the idea behind training of young female Nigerians in journalism is part of the larger Educate A Girl (EAG) programme of the foundation which aims at training a total of 5,000 young ladies in profession across five continents.
“We have chosen the field of journalism because we wish to remind our girls that they have a voice, provide them with a platform for their voices to be heard and to encourage their freedom to say what they wish. And this we wish to spread across major journalism area including, print, broadcasting, online journalism, among others,” Dawood said.
DGF further added that the concept of training young women was inspired by the vision of 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Malala Yousufzai, (who was the 2013 LADIESFUND Khushahalibank Idol winner)‎.
She noted that out of 1000 ladies to be trained from Africa, 252 are coming from Nigeria where 170 registered in Lagos alone and 122 others registered from other states of the federation.
“The participants are young ladies in secondary schools, polytechnics, Colleges of Education, ‎universities, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and recent graduates, all of whom are between the ages of 18 and 28 years.
“After these three days training, there would still be mentorship and leadership programme for up to six months.
“Our aspiration is to raise a new generation of transformational, empowered and media-savvy women leaders because already, there exists a cultural bias, which manifests as a discouragement from hiring women for important spots in traditional media, journalism or positions in contemporary types of social media,” Dawood said.