Under the auspices of the Welthungerhilfe in collaboration with the Association of Journalists of Southeast (AJSE) fifteen journalists from different media of Jacmel attended a training seminar of two days on 6 and 7 July 2012 on climate change, its consequences and risk management.

According to agronomist Jean Véa Dieudonné, Deputy Project Manager of the Welthungerhilfe , the objective of this seminar for workers of the Press, was to give journalists the tools needed to increase public awareness to reduce losses in human life in case of natural disasters. He hopes that after this training, participants will have more capacity in the collection and treatment information related to these situations.

In his speech, Jacques Phillipe Jovin, Consultant to the DPC and also one of the trainers of the seminar, declared, that currently Haiti represented a gateway to natural climatic events. He explained the crucial role that the press should play in raising awareness of the population to such situations. According to him, it is a necessity today, that journalists are trained to inform the public in return. He also advocated for continuing education of the Haitian population for this purpose.

For his part, the engineer Jacques Pierre Jean, the Director General of Radio Télé Express Continentale (RTEC) of Jacmel , also an instructor at the seminar, intervened on techniques of coverage of events in crisis situation and focused on the lexical field that journalists must master during the coverage of such events, to avoid doing more harm to the population through the information disseminated. He urged journalists to gather information when they have to make a statement on the coverage of events in a crisis situation.

Alain Pierre, Secretary General of the AJSE, stated that this serie of training was part of an approach of the AJSE, to strengthen the capacity of journalists in the region to enable them to intervene effectively in these situations often very complex. "The organization of this seminar will also facilitate journalists to better control the weather terms, in order to explain them clearly to the population." He announced that the AJSE will organize in the continuity, a series of training for the benefit of Journalists of the department, noting that this session was the fifth followed by journalists in the past three months, particularly on topics related to the environment.

Note that, practical work and screenings of documentaries have been made ​​for participants during these two days of training seminar.

HL/ Claudy Bélizaire (Correspondant Jacmel)