06 March, 2007 - Published 13:33 GMT

Training trainers for the Arab media

The BBC World Service Trust's media dialogue programme has directly trained over 700 journalists, editors and managers in Oman, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon and Egypt.

The programme has also developed a pool of over 30 Arab trainers, working either as freelancers or in Arab media organisations.

Training trainers

Suheir Al Dahabi is a leading news presenter at Syria's first private satellite television channel, Cham TV.

In February 2007 she delivered a bespoke training programme for her colleagues in Damascus.

Suheir, along with several senior colleagues, has just completed the 'Arab Training the Trainers' course run by the BBC World Service Trust's media dialogue programme.

The media dialogue programme

The programme works in co-operation with media partners in the region to select the very best staff from Trust-led journalism training courses. These staff are then trained to deliver in-house training in their own organisations.

The Trust's trainers are some of the most experienced journalists and editors from the UK media, as well as trainers drawn from a pool of talented Arab media professionals based in the Arab world.

Judging by Suheir's success, plans to build a cadre of highly qualified Arab trainers, mentored by the BBC World Service Trust, have been successful.

Challenging misconceptions

The programme seeks to challenge negativity and misconceptions within some parts of the Arab media industry about the effectiveness of using Arab trainers.

Some of the Trust's Arab experts have actually joked about needing to 'put in blue contact lenses' so that they might be more accepted by the trainees in their sessions.

Once the workshops are underway however, the journalists soon realise how refreshing it is to debate with someone who really understands the newsrooms and culture that they are working in.

Many professional Arab media organisations are actively using the skills of their senior staff to run training programmes. Syria-news.com is making use of the Trust's online journalism modules, in Arabic, to run a series of training courses for young graduates keen to become journalists.

Syria-news.com staff have also attended the 'Training the Trainers' programme to provide new journalism training techniques.

The media dialogue programme is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Global Opportunities fund.