Capacity Building for Dialogue and Development in Southern Thailand
Working towards alleviating poverty in the three provinces of southern Thailand
Context and Issue:
Since the 2004 re-emergence of insurgency in Thailand’s historically turbulent deep south region, the predominately Malay Muslim provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, and parts of the Songkhla province, have suffered daily occurences of violence between the region’s separatist movements and the Thai army. There is, however, very limited meaningful coverage related to the conflict in the Thai media, leading to a lack of understanding among the Thai people of the issues at stake and a feeling of under-representation of the Thai south’s population on a national scale. Following a 2009 assessment by Internews, it was found that the Thai Bangkok-based media saw its south as a ‘dead’ story. Information that did filter out came from either the military or undertrained ‘stringers’ rather than journalists and focused almost exclusively on the incidence of violence rather than the wider socio-political issues affecting the south. What emerged out of this context of little national media coverage and an almost complete lack of independent local media reporting is an embryonic citizen reporting culture. Student groups, CSOs and individuals have become increasingly motivated to produce information on the south from a southern perspective, thus helping to fill the media void. This project seeks to nurture this culture and help groups better represent themselves on the national stage.
Project's activities:
The project uses both training and production output to increase dialogue on and improve awareness of the many issues facing the southern region of Thailand. The creation of a Media Resource Centre in Pattani in conjunction with the Prince of Songhkla University (PSU) communications faculty provides a valuable space for the numerous training sessions that form a major part of the project. Introductory courses in basic journalism, website development and blogging, and using video, offer a generalised curriculum for students, CSOs and activists, whereas investigative and health reporting courses offer specialised training programmes for more experienced journalists. Training of trainers courses target journalists and academics and provide a multiplier effect to improve standards in local journalism. The courses are all based on one week’s intensive training followed by one week of mentoring, led by experienced international and national trainers and assisted by PSU faculty members. TV and radio production outputs complement the training activities. A 5-part TV series on southern Thailand will be broadcast on Thai PBS. Citizens and decision makers will be informed on a national scale. A community radio series on youth in the south will give a voice to this often overlooked demographic. Mentoring and small grants are also offered to CSOs to help develop their communications strategies and consequently improve their ability to get their issues heard on a larger scale.
Participants and Beneficiaries:
The overall target groups include the Thai national media, southern Thailand's non-state Actors and individual activists, including the many local CSOs that focus on poverty alleviation and community development. CSOs and student groups from the affected communities who, in participating in one of the project’s training courses or benefiting from expert mentoring, are the immediate beneficiaries of the project. They gain knowledge and ability to voice their causes and the issues at stake in southern Thailand. Our partners, Muslim Attorney Centre and Thai PBS, will benefit from in-house training for their staff on communications skills and investigative reporting respectively. The final beneficiaries will be the marginalised communities of southern Thailand who, through this project, will see quality coverage of issues they face made available to the wider population, including Bangkok-based policy makers. The empowerment of southern Thailand's civil society and the increased motivation in the national press to report on the socio-political situation will help compel the government to devote more attention to resolving the separatist conflict and overcome the marginalisation of the two million people from the region. Specific final beneficiaries will include women and disadvantaged young people living in the Thai south, who will finally be given a space in which to express themselves.
Outcomes:
A central tenet of the project is the two-month in-house training for Thai PBS personnel on investigative reporting and reporting on public policy, which will give journalists from the national broadcaster the skills to cover the South’s complex socio-political situation. This will lead up to the production of a five-part series to be broadcast nationally on Thai PBS that will reinvigorate the debate on policy issues facing the Thai south. Alongside the work undertaken with broadcasters are the training activities that include 14 one-week training programmes in various media skills for southern CSOs, students and junior reporters. Each session will guide 12 participants in their new skills and help them produce websites, Twitter accounts, blogs and other web 2.0 communications tools, short videos, news copy and radio programmes. Participants will produce at least one media product each by the end of their respective training schedules. Their skills in producing quality information on issues affecting their communities will improve and will result in further resources for the local population, national media and policy makers alike. A permanent outcome of this project will be the Media Training Centre in Pattani that will provide a space for training activities during and after the project. The centre is more than a classroom - it provides a link with the local community and a focal point for the importance of awareness-raising on the Thai south’s issues.
"I can use whatever I got from the training with my current job and also improve my IT skill. I can use this new knowledge to improve my organisation’s website.”
A participant in a basic web course in Southern Thailand
