By Salomie Weah
MONROVIA, March 27 (LINA) – Several Liberian journalists have benefitted from a two-day training workshop organized by the Liberia National Red Cross Society (LNRCS) aimed at empowering and improving journalists’ abilities to report humanitarian stories that will inspire donor actions for fundraising.
Held from March 26th to 27th at the LNRCS headquarters in Monrovia the training brought together journalists from Maryland, River Cess, River Gee, Bong, Grand Kru, Sinoe, Grand Bassa and Montserrado counties.
The journalists were coached on news contents gathering that are of human interest so as to inspire donor fundings to transform lives.
Giving the overview of the training workshop, Oniel Bestman, LNRCS Communication Manager disclosed that due to the increasing complexity of humanitarian needs and diminishing donor fundings, the LNRCS has decided to raise funds to sustain its local and international media to mobilize resources for humanitarian action.
According to him, besides the Swedish government that is a part of the Red Cross family, it has been awhile since the Red Cross received outside fundings and looking at the increasing need for support to enable LNRCS help more people during and after disaster to regain hope and restore dignities, there’s an urgent need to increase donor fundings to help the entity boots its operations.
“One of the newest innovations is to generate and publish compelling fundraising contents in both local and international media to mobilize resources for humanitarian actions,” Bestman said.
He praised the Swedish Red Cross (SRC) for their support in helping the LNRCS hold the two- day Storytelling Workshop for Fundraising, adding that it will increase capacity development for journalists to now begin to tell stories in a different way as such initiative will enable them not to just tell stories but stories that will inspire fundraising actions and transform lives.
The workshop was facilitated by Lisa Johanson, Campaign Manager, Anna Lithander, Editor In Chief and Tomas Arlemo, Photographer of the Swedish Red Cross as well as Armel Komena, SRC Country Representative from the Ivory Coast, and representatives from the LNRCS Communications Department.
