mercedessayagues.com

Mercedes Sayagues

Editor • Journalism Trainer • Journalist

JOURNALISM TRAINING

Journalism Training Experience

Sayagues professionalized her training skills through the Fojo Media Institute in Sweden. She has worked globally as a media trainer  with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), Fojo, the Nordic/SADC Centre for Journalism, International Women in Media Foundation, and Measure DHS, among others.

She has written two manuals on reporting on HIV/AIDS in Lusophone Africa and trained dozens of journalists across Africa, Asia and Latin America to improve their skills and coverage.

Road safety training in Bogota with journalists from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico.

Planning health messages with community radios after Cyclone Idai in Mozambique.

Niamey, Niger: I taught reporters how to mine demographic health surveys for data and story ideas.

Multimedia Training Labs in Mozambique

Between 2010 and 2013 I was a Knight Health Fellow in Mozambique, with a brief to improve health reporting. With Women in Law/Mozambique, I designed a curriculum and led five training courses for community radio reporters on sexual and reproductive health and rights.

 In 2014, as Technical Adviser to IREX in Mozambique, I designed and conducted multimedia training labs for young reporters unfamiliar with digital tools. 

They learned  to put up and manage the project  website, upload their multimedia stories, shoot and edit photos, as well as  refining their interviewing, investigative and writing skills. It was a fantastic experience to see them grow in confidence and ability to work online.

Over three months we explored the nearby Mercado do Povo (People’s Market),  Maputo’s oldest  popular food market. See the online reportage here and the magazine here.

We covered the annual pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the Virgin of Namaacha, 80km from Maputo, the capital. That was great fun and  hard work. One reporter chose to walk with the faithful and report along the way.

The pilgrimage,  banned under Mozambique’s post-independence Marxist regime,  was reinstated after the first democratic multiparty elections in 1994. Ever since, it grows bigger every year. See the online reportage here and the  magazine here.

The digital media lab team.

Recent training assignments

  • Trainer, mentor and webinar/ workshop organizer for WHO/ICFJ to  improve coverage of road safety issues, 2020/23.
  • Media trainer and mentor for Fellows on Global Nutrition and Food Security , ECF/ICFJ, 2021/22.
  • Mentor for young journalists reporting on violence against children, ICFJ.
  • ToT Trainer for road safety, mentor for Road Safety Reporting Fellowships, WHO 2022/23,  WHO/ICFJ 2020/21.
  • Led a Training on reporting on road safety in South East Asia, Sri Lanka, WHO/ICFJ, 2017.
  • Led ToT for journalists from Central African Republic and Eastern DRC for International Women’s Media Foundation, Goma, DRC, 2016.
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    • Media trainer for DHS, Demographic Health Surveys in Niger and Comoros, 2014.
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