By Reagan Malumo KATIMA MULILO The Acting Governor of the Caprivi Region, Moffaty Sileze, officially opened a 14-day workshop at Katima on Monday organized by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) in collaboration with UNESCO. The workshop, which started on March 5 and aims at discussing the plight of the community media, is being attended by 20 participants from the Caprivi Vision newspaper, Zenith newspaper, the Spectator magazine and several other independent journalists. Under the guidance of three facilitators from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the workshop is intended to enhance the journalistic skills of participants and to empower them on how to manage their media organizations so that they can serve their communities better. According to the facilitators, issues such as HIV/AIDS, unemployment and poverty are some of the major threats eating at the social fabric of the communities in the Caprivi Region. They urged the community media to create a platform for debate and discussions to address these issues in the region. Delivering a speech on behalf of the Governor of Caprivi region, Sileze reiterated that all citizens, including the most marginalized, have a right to communicate -“this is a right and not a privilege”, emphasized Sileze. He said it is imperative that community media practitioners understand and appreciate the role played by these small media in their respective communities. He further commended MIB and UNESCO for availing resources to train community media practitioners in the region as well as to consolidate the community communication outlets. Meanwhile, the community media suffered a major setback over the past few years in the region due to lack of sponsorship and advertising. It is against this background that the Governor and the participants are calling on MIB, together with the business fraternity, to help community media practitioners to get their papers off the ground until they are financially sound. They say that since the Caprivi Region is struggling with many social, cultural and economic issues, it is a priority that the region establishes strong community media entities that can stand up to highlight and deliberate on them. Participants expressed delight about the skills and knowledge acquired. They are confident that this will help them address most issues in the Caprivi Region that do not receive much attention due to the fact that Windhoek-based media only filters through certain issues and does not concentrate on a whole range of matters that apply to communities in the region. They say there is a need for the local media to address these difficulties, since an informed society has greater capacity to address their own problems and contribute to the economic development of the country. According to one of the facilitators, Dina Gowases, skills-transfer is important if Namibia is to build human capacity in line with Vision 2030. She said that since community media is a relatively new concept in Namibia, it is important to continuously sharpen the skills of media practitioners and acquaint them with new trends in the field in order to create a viable and sound industry. “Workshops of this kind give opportunity to aspiring and already grounded media practitioners to sharpen their know-how on delivering information to communities about communities for communities,” Gowases added. At the end of the workshop, participants are expected to produce a publication covering a wide range of community issues, which will be published by UNESCO. The workshop ends on Friday.