Press Freedom 2.0 wins Dutch Ministry approval

Maastricht - November 2, 2010

The Dutch Foreign Ministry announced today that the ‘Press Freedom 2.0’ consortium will receive financial support of €21.8 million for the period 2011-2015.
 
The ideas behind Press Freedom 2.0 were submitted by a consortium of five Dutch development organisations: Free Voice, European Journalism Centre, European Partnership for Democracy, People on a Mission, and World Press Photo. Along with many partnering organisations in the project countries, the consortium’s five year proposal was developed and coordinated with Dutch embassies in 13 target countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the former Soviet Union.
 
Press Freedom 2.0 is an innovative plan to strengthen press freedom: through training journalists, improving the quality of media, and offering a voice to women, children and minorities. The programme will help media organisations improve their contributions to the better functioning of more open and democratic societies. 
 
Examples of Press Freedom 2.0 projects include: supporting press freedom initiatives in Zimbabwe, the expansion of media literacy programming for young people in South Africa, the training of women journalists in Bolivia, Pakistan and Bangladesh and professional photo training for photojournalists in The Philippines.
 
EJC Director Wilfried Rütten: “We are very pleased with this support from the government. This is a great opportunity for the European Journalism Centre to build on the journalism training and capacity building expertise we have gained so far. The programmes will allow us to strengthen independent journalism, using new tools and new platforms. Moreover, it will afford substantial synergy and allow for better cooperation between all the journalists in our international network.”

Posted on November 2, 2010 by EJC
Filed under development.