Home - Global Forum for Media Development

[May 25, 2007]
Russia Petition - The Global Forum for Media Development, which Internews Russia helped launch, has launched an online petition in solidarity with fellow media professionals in Russia and in support of Ms. Aslamazyan and the EMF.
GFMD - Global Forum for Media Development
GFMD is a practitioner-led process designed to be long-term and open to the community involved in media development around the world.
GFMD's first activity was the organisation of the first global conference of media aid organisations over the course of three days in Amman (Jordan) in October 2005. Over 400 registered participants attended.
GFMD aims to bring greater linkages and sustainable impact to the work of the media development sector as a whole. It seeks to do this through:

Collaboration: Creating a practitioner-led platform for the media development sector to advocate with donors, governments, opinion leaders and the wider public.

Substantiation: Promoting and disseminating research and analysis on the effects of media development assistance on governance, civic participation, poverty alleviation, emergent crises, and markets worldwide; making the case for media development as a primary pillar for advancing social, economic, and political development.

Professionalization: Establishing agreed-upon standards and ethics for media development work that encourage cross-sector cooperation.

Shared Learning: Critiquing and evaluating the media development sector to identify and advance best practices, methods, and technology.
Plans are to create a GFMD Secretariat to facilitate cooperative initiatives, organize joint lobbying for policy reforms, maintain databases of media laws and best practices, and design common systems for monitoring and evaluating media development work.
GFMD is guided by a Steering Committee comprised of the leadership of the following organizations:

BBC World Service Trust, UK

Educated Media Foundation, Russia
Environmental Education Media Project, China
Fundacion Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI), Colombia
Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR), USA/UK
International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), USA
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Belgium
Internews International, France
IREX, USA
Media Development Loan Fund (MDLF), USA
Media Rights Agenda, Nigeria
Panos, UK
South East Asian Press Alliance, Thailand
World Association of Newspapers (WAN), France
Zambezi FoX, South Africa
The Steering Committee meets from time to time to discuss how to further advance the sector's interests. Meetings in the near future are planned for:
20 May 2006, in Prague (the "governance task force")
10 June 2006, in Tbilisi (the Eurasia regional steering committee)
23-24 June 2006 in Washington, DC.
GFMD Sponsors
GFMD is made possible through the generous support of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Department for International Development (DFID - United Kingdom), the Ford Foundation, the Government of Jordan, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Lodestar Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy, the United Nations Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and UNESCO.
For more information on GFMD, please email: contact@gfmd.info

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 22 April 2008 )