We are thrilled to announce that Amplify Change has awarded Media Matters for Women – Sierra Leone their € 89,000 Strengthening grant! Our project will begin March 11, 2019. Florence Njai-Sesay will serve as our Project Coordinator and Abibatu Kamara as our Finance Officer. Our Senior Journalists are Alinah Kallon, Ndeamoh Mansaray, and Zainab Sheriff.
The new project will allow us to expand beyond our core work of producing and distributing original podcasts using mobile phones. We will now be able to include leadership and advocacy training as well as communication and network building with local youth and women’s community associations. The aim of the training is centered on building local women’s capacities to advocate for their sexual and reproductive health rights and to use technologies such as Bluetooth to especially transfer this information to “last mile” women and girls.
We plan to train 15 community leaders and 45 Youth Advocates to deliver five local campaigns on issues prioritized by the women and girls in their communities – targeting local district health authorities, ward committees, and national ministries in Freetown. We anticipate reaching 15,000 women and girls with this rights-based information in one year.
In addition, 250 local and national decision makers will increase their understanding of local rights-based issues affecting women/girls. We also anticipate training 40 female journalists from radio, newspapers, television, and new media to increase their understanding of how we at Media Matters for Women use ‘enabling technologies’ like Bluetooth to reach the most isolated women and girls in Sierra Leone.
We believe this project will significantly enhance our work in Sierra Leone of producing and delivering information on issues of importance to rural women and girls. It builds on our many successes in promoting gender equality and the empowerment of poor, vulnerable, and marginalized women and girls living in the most remote communities in Sierra Leone.