By Sharon Kiburi
Nairobi, Kenya: The Media Environment, Science, Health and Agriculture Association (MESHA) for journalists celebrated its fifteen years of existence in the virtual conference. The Association prides itself on mentoring, growing, and supporting science journalism in Africa. The festivity was coloured by the ushering in of the newly appointed Chief executive Officer, Aghan Daniel.
Bearing in mind that MESHA has depended mainly on volunteerism and member registration fee to run its operations, especially in the first ten years, this milestone moment is worth celebrating. MESHA says it would not have achieved these through integrity, smart partnering, and teamwork of brilliant volunteers serving the media community delivering quality services that empower beginning, middle and seasoned journalists, communications officers, government and non-governmental organisations.
“Mentoring and inspiring young journalists in science reporting are among the core objectives I wish to achieve,” said Aghan Daniel. It is evident in Aghan’s thrill of training journalists to gain diverse skills. Recently he trained six journalists on Solution Journalism while ten journalists have given support to work on Solution Journalism features. Adding he will strengthen the science cafe monthly meeting to enhance environmental and agriculture reporting in the country.
Gracing the occasion was Steve Werblow from the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) who commended Mesha for the good work in supporting, training mentoring science reporters in Africa.
“MESHA has brought people together around science, showing the unbreakable bond that links science, health, agriculture and environmental issues through educating each other,” said Werblow.
In attendance was Dr. Charles Wendo Training Coordinator, at the Science development network (SciDev.Net) who stressed the need to understand basic science when reporting on science issues. “ It is paramount for journalists to improve their science experts network sources, one of the ways for a journalist to do this is to be part of associations and networks,” said Dr Charle Wendo. Adding science stories needs to be about people to be impactful.
“Funding is a challenge that has made us( MESHA) do as much as we could like to; hence I wish to have dedicated resources mobilizing a team to enable MESHA makes its maximum impact in science reporting in Africa.” Said Aghan Daniels. He further said that he would like to realise that county journalists’ training improves reporting on health matters in Kenya at different county levels with enough resources.
Mesha looks to hold a week-long boot camp to training journalists on the science of vaccine to avoid misinformation & disinformation, Article pitching and data journalism. Mesha’s inception was in November 2005 with just five members they are Daniel Otunga, Naftali Mungai, Daisy Ouya, Aghan Daniel and Wandera Ojanji.
It was a dream to bring together Science Media professionals to deliver excellent Science news to help Kenyans be informed, empowered,conscious of emerging issues in agriculture, environment and health issues. It has spread its wings across other African countries over the years.
