Fondation Hirondelle organized a training session on local governance for journalists from the Kairouan region in late October in Tunisia, with the support of the Swiss Confederation.

After having supported the training of local offices of the Tunisian national radio between 2011 and 2016, Fondation Hirondelle is now active in the country through the PACT project ("Active Participation of Tunisian Citizens"). This project aims to strengthen the decentralization process through direct support to a truly co-constructed and accountable local governance. The objective of the activities implemented by Fondation Hirondelle and its local partners is to develop independent, reliable and inclusive information and to stimulate democratic processes in the regions.

Thus, a first training session was organized from October 25 to 29, bringing together thirteen local journalists, including ten women, and five "citizen" journalists, amateurs and bloggers.

This program was supported by the organization of the leader of the PACT project, the Danish organization NIRAS, and the International Development Center for the Innovative Local Governance (CILG).

The session was moderated by two journalists: Michel Beuret, former senior reporter, now Editorial Manager of Fondation Hirondelle, and Thameur Zoghlemi, a Tunisian journalist specialized in the coverage of current issues related to decentralization.

The topics covered during this training included the ethics of journalism, the identification of "fake news" and the media response to it, as well as a better knowledge of the legislative framework necessary for the exercise of the profession of journalist working as local.

These five days of in situ training are a prelude to an in-depth and long-term accompanying of each journalist's production on local governance, with a remote mentor, who will reinforce their production practices until October 2022.

Tarek Benhmissi, director of Sufetula radio in Sbeïtla, explains : "Thanks to this training opportunity, our journalist has acquired many new journalistic techniques, which we will use in our radio and our programs".