Instructions for trainers

This course is divided into four days. Per day, you can find the curriculum on this website. The curriculum is designed to facilitate interaction between learners and to encourage journalists to share their own knowledge about safety and security in the regions that they live and work. There is no blanket solution to security which is why trainers are encouraged to add to and amend the curriculum to meet the needs of the journalists they are training.

This course was designed to facilitate conversation and to foster an atmosphere of trust and collaboration. To ensure this, no more than 15 people should be invited to take part. Trainers are encouraged to carry out a needs assessment prior to the training to establish what topics journalists want to cover. The course should be then adapted to cover the elements raised.

If you have any questions about the training and how to adapt it to your context, please email us at safety@freepressunlimited.org

If you wish to adapt the curriculum to your own needs, please click here

Curriculum

Welcome to Free Press Unlimited’s comprehensive training for women journalists. Running over four days, this training curriculum is designed to address the needs of women journalists from a physical, digital and well-being standpoint. The course tackles physical, digital, and well-being issues each day rather than designating a single day to one issue. This ensures that participants are thinking holistically about their security. Journalists who take the course will learn how to plan for risk in different scenarios and will come away from training with a completed risk assessment and communications plan.

The course is accompanied by supporting materials for trainers to access. These include curriculum resources for in-class exercises as well as a communications plan and a risk assessment document. Both the communications plan and the risk assessment template are designed to be completed during the course, but they can also be used as stand-alone documents. 

This curriculum is also designed to be adapted to regional contexts as security concerns and advice to mitigate risks can vary greatly depending on the country. Throughout the course, there is space for trainers to use regional case studies to highlight specific threats that women journalists face around the world. Trainers are also encouraged to share their case studies with other trainers by uploading them to our designated platform.

This course has been developed by Free Press Unlimited and has been designed by trainers for trainers. It has built off work previously done by Internews with their Saferjourno and Level Up curriculum as well as the excellent work done by IREX with their SAFE Basic Training Curriculum.