An Overview of PANOS’ Involvement in Sudan

What is Panos Globally?
Panos works towards stimulating informed debate and discussion on development issues both at country and regional levels. Panos aims to raise awareness on neglected and poorly understood issues and works towards providing marginalized sectors of society with the means of communication for providing their own agenda. Panos supports journalists in their reporting on development issues with focus on pastrolism, gender, the environment, health, media, conflict and other development concerns.

What is Panos Sudan?
(The project started in Feb 2002 as pilot project for one year)
PANOS Sudan started as a pilot project of Panos Ethiopia, which is a country office of Panos Eastern Africa, based in Kampala Uganda? Panos Eastern Africa is regional center working under Panos London. Panos eastern Africa works in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan Uganda, Somalia and Tanzania. Panos Sudan now expand to be as country office under Kampala office.

Activities of PANOS Sudan.

• VAW Project
  Coordinating the implementation of the pilot project aiming to end violence against women in Sudan through advocacy activities such as;
  -Commissioning monitoring activity to identify the violent cases at the level of courts, prisons and awaiting harassed.
  -Conducting a survey identify types, forms, incidence of VAW experienced by women in Sudan and also knowing the effective methodology in dealing with this phenomena, since, as a concept it is still not yet clear from a Sudanese prespective putting the fact that it is imported and the dealing with it is internationally even new.
  -Commissioning research to clarify the concept of VAW in the Sudanese context and to identify the trends and perceptions of VAW by the Sudanese women themselves ending up with strategies to combat the phenomenon.

• Gender Advocacy
  – Awareness raising on gender and violence targeting law enforcement and media agencies.
  – Publishing a Gender page with Al Ayam Newspaper targeting the public at large and aiming to stimulate public debate on gender issues.

• How do we work?
  Through partnership with the relevant concerned organizations as Mutawinat, Gender Center, salmmah and Teeba press (media Agency)

What we have experienced so far
To achieve an easy result for any development, we have to involve the media who could easily disseminate and owned the outcome of any activity if they internalized the objectives and means. In addition to this, the fact that the peace process is ongoing aiming to have a sustainable peace building for the whole community in Sudan expecting that after the peace achieved, lots of awareness and capacity building programs is needed. And this can not be achieved without the involvement of the media who’s interns require to be competent. To achieve such purpose the media, specially print media, has to build its training capacity so as to fulfill the peace building period requirements. At this point Panos Sudan would like to intervene .To do so we have to start relying on the journalists themselves to identify and assess their training needs referring to what has been identified by Panos so far such as;
· Information collection and analyses of the information
· Documentation and documentaries
· Reporting
· Other additional topics could be identified

Prepared by, Manal Ali Bashir, General Program Manager
Panos-Sudan
On the purpose of the Journalists Assessment Training workshop