MEDIA AND PHOTOGRAPHY: A STRONG MEDIUM FOR ADVOCACY

Arch Diocese of Bhopal and Uday social development society organised a three- day training program on Media and Journalism specifically Photography, Video, Print and electronic media from 26^th– 28^th April 2017 at Pastoral Centre Bhopal. Total 25 participants from Madhya Pradesh (Khandwa, Jhabua Bhopal and Rajasthan (Banswara) participated in the programs who are representatives from working for Women empowerment, Child education, adolescent issues and promoting organic farming besides creating and effective team of media and journalist for the Archdiocese of Bhopal.

Archbishop Leo Cornelio lauded the PR Office and Uday Society for taking initiative to organise such seminar cum training programme to uplift the society.  Topics covered in the training program were -a) technical components of Media – history of electronic media, how to write press release, feature writing etc. b) photography techniques – how to take qualitative photographs and videos, technical knowledge on handling camera, clicking photographs etc. The focus of the training was to raise voices of the community to the stakeholders through media and photographs.

The training created a supportive environment in the context of social issues with media. Training built a platform to build relationship with the media. Participants found training useful and interesting and shared after this training technical knowledge on media and photography will strengthen to advocate and raise community voices to the stakeholders. Ms. Sravani Sarkar insisted to adopt positive approach to address the issues with media and she will ensure to raise issue to bring change in the women’s life in society. In electronic media- Mr. Sharad Dwivedi ensured his support to raise the field issues at state level.

Dr. Saroj Asthana in his key note address gave an outline history of media world and how can we be effective journalist in the challenging world. Fr. Maria Stephen the PRO, said to the media that “It is a first step of the society to create a clean image of journalists without compromising the core values of the society. The resource persons in the training were – Dr. Saroj Asthana- Chief Editor, First Post magazine, Ms. Sravani Sarkar – Owner of news website, Mr. Manoj – Central colour lab, Mrs.  Bhawana Jaiswal – lecturer and wild life photographer, Mr. Saji Thomas, Mr. Sharad Dwivedi - Bureau Chief and Mr. Rajkumar Suryawanshi – expert in video and sound editing.