AY 2007-2008 Projects - East Asia and Pacific

Country                       Burma
City                              Rangoon
Host Institution           American Center

Project Description
The post would like to continue offering classes to young people interested in journalism. Burma has no journalism school and no faculty of journalism at any of its (faltering) universities. The American Center runs five media training courses a year, and the EL Fellow Program has been a crucial complement to those. The current journalism EL Fellow focused most of her efforts on teaching English to professional journalists, which has resulted in their being able to use the internet and other research tools for their work. Her work has been on teaching English through journalism. Now the post wants to switch that around, so the EL Fellow would teach journalism through English, a slightly different focus. The new EL Fellow will build on the Introduction to Journalism curriculum that has been put together, and create and teach an intermediate-level journalism class for promising students from the current class. Last year also offered a class called Introduction to Journalism, which used the cachet of the media to attract non-journalists. This wound up being the sleeper class of the term, with a variety of different students -- political activists, young writers, students who want to study abroad, and other young professionals -- who saw a good chance to improve their critical thinking skills. The EL Fellow would work a following schedule: teaching Level 5 or 6 English (which has an extremely strong writing component), and one or two journalism electives. The current EL Fellow has also provided two-week media training seminars for our second-line leaders of National League for Democracy and ethnic political parties of the democratic opposition. We would like an incoming EL Fellow to continue these short-term trainings for important target audiences among the democratic opposition, including student activists, who are a powerful force for change.

Project Objectives
Under an authoritarian regime, the support and encouragement of a free press is one of the best ways to take positive strides against a dictatorship. The press in Burma is consistently rated among the world's most lacking in freedom. Burma has been under dictatorial rule for 50 years, and a free press has never had the opportunity to flourish. Over forty years ago, all universities were forced to suspend their journalism programs and currently no journalism classes are offered in the Burmese educational system. While the post supports professional journalists through a variety of training programs with I-Bucks or in partnership with iNGOs such as InterNews, there is little quality instruction outside the American Center for aspiring or new journalists who would like to develop proper writing, interviewing and reporting techniques within an ethical framework. It is important to nurture a new group of journalists who learn their trade before they apply it. To sufficiently support our two main goals of supporting democracy and human rights, it is essential that we have a qualified teacher to teach this difficult and highly sensitive subject.

About the Host Institution