FY 2000-2001 Annual Report
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Message from the Co-Chairs
This year the work of the IWMF touched the lives of more and a more diverse group of women journalists than ever before. Our programs reached women journalists of color in the United States to help them develop their own leadership opportunities and style. A new IWMF program reached Latin American women journalists at all rungs of the career ladder with a new initiative to meet the particular challenges they face. And, in Africa, where the IWMF's African Women's Media Center continues its groundbreaking work, important new programs helped equip journalists with the information and skills they need to cover the HIV/AIDS pandemic that is ravaging that continent.
In the United States, the IWMF held the last of a series of leadership workshops for women journalists of color. Diversity in U.S. newsrooms has long been an IWMF priority. In 1999, the results of an IWMF survey, Present Without Power, pointed out the need for leadership training for women of color. Launched in 2000 with funding from The Ford Foundation, the series has offered women of color in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago the opportunity to talk among themselves about the issues they face and, with the help of a trainer, to develop plans for dealing with and overcoming challenges to success. The IWMF remains committed to diversity and to training women journalists of color to assume leadership roles in newsrooms. In the coming year, we will offer a new series of leadership training workshops, always keeping in mind that diversity in our workshops is an important first step to reaching diversity in newsrooms.
The IWMF has also long been active in Latin America, holding programs in Santiago, Chile in 1995, and in Mexico, beginning in 1997. In 2001, we met with women journalists from all over Latin America in a fact-finding tour coupled with a series of leadership development workshops. Our goal was to lay the groundwork for the IWMF Latin American Initiative and more intense IWMF involvement in Latin America. The workshops gave us the opportunity to meet with women journalists from the IWMF network and to find out from them what programs would best support their development as professionals and as leaders in the media.
In Africa, the African Women's Media Center, a project of the IWMF, continues to break new ground in cyberspace. This year the center expanded its commitment to innovative use of technology by harnessing the power of the Internet to help fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. By sharing the techniques, resources and facts that reporters need about HIV/AIDS, the AWMC armed some 300 women with the skills they need to become better journalists and better citizens of their nations. The AWMC's five-day "cyberforums" over the Internet have become linchpins of AWMC programs. They are a unique way to maximize the power of the Internet to train women journalists. The AWMC also builds on these virtual conferences by publishing much-needed resource guides, which are available in hard copy and online.
The AWMC also continued its pioneering work of bringing leadership training to African women journalists at the annual Carole Simpson Leadership Institute (CSLI). Now well known and well regarded across the continent, CSLI is one of the few opportunities for leadership development that is available to African women journalists.
The Courage in Journalism Awards were a highlight of the IWMF's year. We received more nominations for the year 2000 awards than ever before, proving that this award -- the only one like it reserved exclusively for women journalists -- has captured the imagination of our male and female colleagues in the media and supporters of a free press everywhere. The awardees, as always, inspire the IWMF and the world with their integrity and bravery.
We are also inspired by the courage and dedication to their profession of women journalists around the world. The men and women of the IWMF board and all of our colleagues look forward to working with them to expand and amplify women's voices in the media.
Bailey Morris-Eck
IWMF Co-Chair
The Reuters Foundation
Carole Simpson
IWMF Co-Chair
ABC News