Caritas Staff, Project Workers Trained In Communications

Posted: 11th September 2007

Cambodians working to put together a story during a media training session at the Caritas Cambodia

SIEM REAP (UCAN) -- In order to support their rural development work throughout the country, local Caritas workers have received training on how to communicate more effectively through media.

About 30 staff involved in Caritas projects came together Aug. 31-Sept. 1 for a seminar and workshop on media communications at the Caritas Cambodia office in Siem Reap, 230 kilometers northwest of Phnom Penh. Caritas Cambodia is the social-service organization of the local Catholic Church.

Patrick Nicholson, head of communications for Caritas Internationalis, led the seminar and taught the participants how to write news reports. He also gave an introduction to photography.

Caritas Internationalis is a confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development and social-service organizations established by local Churches working in more than 200 countries and territories, according to its website (www.caritas.org).

Caritas Cambodia, registered with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1990, started working in Boeung Tum Pong, a suburb of Phnom Penh, and in Battambang province, western Cambodia. It now works through its grassroots Village Development Associations in about 250 villages in six of the country's 20 provinces.

Its rural development projects include irrigation, home and school vegetable gardening, water sanitation, dam rehabilitation and vaccination of draught animals. It also has projects to foster social development, women's empowerment and community health.

"This is the first time Caritas Cambodia has had a seminar on media communication," Nuth Sam Ol, the organization's executive director, told UCA News. He explained that he organized the seminar because many staff members and project workers have difficulty communicating information about projects.

He told participants at the seminar, "Communicating through media is not difficult, but will not be effective if you don't do it well.

After presentation by Nicholson, the participants, mostly in their early 20s up to mid-30s, went out to report on a Caritas HIV/AIDS project as a practical exercise.

Eang Chan, a Caritas staff member from Battambang province, told UCA News, "This program has taught things I didn't know before." He said he can now write news stories and case studies more clearly.

Gheat Theary, 25, from the Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, which Caritas Cambodia supports, felt the program was more then just basic training, "because a professional came to train us."

From the same center, Doctor J. Bhoomikumar added, "I will take what I have learned here and go back and train my staff to know how to write news."

Article Source: UCAN