Spoon FM’s Senior reporter, Dennise Nimpson has joined 30 other African journalists to attend a disaster risk meeting hosted by the Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation, under the theme Disaster Risk Reduction and Effective Early Warning Systems. Nimpson is also co-host of the Spoon’s breakfast show and a correspondent of the Voice of America (VOA) for Monrovia, Liberia.
Her selection was based on a previous performance during an online training for Liberian journalists organized by AUB.
She said the meeting, organized by the African Union of Broadcasting (AUB) and the UN Office of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), is meant to enhance broadcasters’ capacity in delivering timely and understandable early warnings and institutionalize DRR reporting in their programs, to provide education on disaster risk management and prevention.
Other objectives of the meeting include to strengthen the capacity of African broadcast media organizations to fulfill their role in the early warning chain of communications in their countries, to deliver timely, accurate, and understandable early warning messages to wide audiences before, during and immediately after disasters. It also aims to equip Radio and TV media outlets with the necessary disaster risk reduction and climate change skills, and knowledge about solutions, to disseminate disaster risk reduction solutions on a broad range of topics such as floods, food, and water security as well as educate people how to prepare to prevent natural hazards becoming disasters.
The meeting will also encourage inter-regional collaboration between news production and documentary units to cover disaster risk reduction and adaptation issues and facilitate news exchange within and between the regions for syndication and sharing.
DRR for the past four years has provided trainings for more than 1,000 media practitioners from 33 African broadcasting organizations in 31 countries.
The AUB has been working with public broadcasters, however, this year has reached a consensus with partners to involve private media institutions and Nimpson is one of those benefiting from the decision.
At the program, the Liberian female broadcaster is one of the few journalists selected to produce a short documentary on early warnings after online training that led to her selection to participate in the summit.
Liberia is amongst five countries that do not have an early warning system in place to mitigate climate change disasters.
Nipson has praised the summit’s organizers for the opportunity to participate.
“As we are aware, Liberia is prone to extreme weather conditions that as journalists we need to pay keen attention,” she said.
She noted that the training has increased her knowledge on reporting climate change disasters and how to providing adequate awareness to minimize risks.
“I will also share the knowledge with colleagues and shift the method of reporting.”