Development of Media

Georgian Initiative for the Enhancement of Broadcast Activities

Media professionals in Georgia are operating in a rapidly changing environment. The competitive media market, the recent changes in the political environment, the rise of new technologies and the building of a civil society after years of political instability are demanding a new attitude from media professionals in the country.

Internews Georgia (IG) is a non-profit organisation established in 1994 that provides training services for mid career media professionals. In the context of the changing environment, IG had a strong need to strengthen its capacity to develop tailor-made training solutions for the broadcast sector.

Strengthening training capacity
RNTC, IG, and the Bulgarian Media Development Centre have implemented a joint project to strengthen the capacity of IG to design and deliver training. During the 3-year project Georgian media professionals and media and human resource managers are trained to better address the informational needs of civil society. MDC was the service provider.


Identical media situation
The Bulgarian Media Center worked with RNTC on a similar project in Bulgaria between 2002 and 2006 (the South East European Radio Training Initiative SEERTI) when the Bulgarian media situation was similar to that of Georgia today. MDC’s expertise is invaluable especially regarding the training of IG staff and local trainers as well as regarding the design and implementation of a tailor-made training programme for media professionals.

Training trainers and managers

Two staff members of Internews and eight journalists from broadcasting media followed a ‘training of trainers’ programme (ToT) in order to enhance the local training capacity. In the second and third year of the project these local trainers trained the selected media professionals, using different training methodologies such as face to face training, eLearning and coaching. The new trainers were intensively coached by the Bulgarian training team.

Involving management and advisory board
In order to ensure the involvement and support of the managers of the broadcasting organisations, as well as to provide them with more advanced management tools, a training programme on media management was part of the project.

In addition, an advisory group including the Georgian media industry was formed to be consulted on the design of the training curriculum and to discuss interim evaluations.

This project is financially supported by the Social Transformation Programme Central and Eastern Europe (Matra) of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

An evaluation op the programme took place in May 2010, the executive summary of the evaluation report can be found here.

More information:

* Contact RNTC: info@rntc.nl