Call for Participation
for
Media Fellowship Program
under the project entitled ‘Empowering Women for building sustainable Livelihoods in urban Bangladesh”

Dushtha Shasthya Kendra (DSK) is a National Non-Government organization, implementing project “Empowering Women and Building Sustainable Livelihoods in Urban Bangladesh” supported by Oxfam in Bangladesh and John Lewis Foundation. The project is designed to support vulnerable communities in urban slum areas in Dhaka & Gazipur districts from where John Lewis Foundation operate their supply chain operations. The major aim of the project is to “empower women and girls gradually in urban slums to challenge social norms for their sustainable livelihood”.

Dushtha Shasthya Kendra (DSK) invites applications from potential journalists, with demonstrated interest in covering the Prospect, opportunities, lessons, challenges and limitations of interventions delivered by Dushtha Shasthay Kendra (DSK) with the support of Oxfam for women entrepreneurs or Women Home based workers social and economic development in Bangladesh. This fellowship will conduct field based research, articles or stories collection, media reporting on various facts that women entrepreneurs/Women Home based workers faces in their regular life.

The project is pursuing three main strategies in parallel, which is given below:

1. The capacity of Women Home Based worker is strengthened so that they can initiate their own livelihoods in a sustainable way.
2. Women Home Based workers have the voice to create a strong protest against domestic and all kind of violence against women in their communities.
3. Recognition of Unpaid Care Work based on solid evidence, so that they create more space in National Level for including the hidden income from unpaid care work in National GDP.

Objective of Media Fellowship:

The overall objective of the assignment is to influence government, policy makers, private sector, suppliers and other relevant stakeholders to take initiative for `Women Economic Empowerment” for women informal worker living in urban areas.

Specific Objective:

1. To demonstrate the learning, challenges and success of Empowering Women and Building Sustainable Livelihoods in Urban Bangladesh Project.
2. To develop evidence based report, publication, write up and article for influencing public and private stakeholders for creating better working environment for women home based workers.
3. To highlight challenges of women in perspective of social and economic challenges and position of women in society which reflected through violence against women and girls (VAWG).

Scope of the Media Fellowship:

 This fellowship will capture the following:

• Field based research for highlighting challenges faced by Women Home Based workers to initiate their own business.
• Opportunities from Government and other actors to support the Home-Based workers to initiate and continue their business.
• The opinion of technical experts/policymakers/bureaucrats on issues so that Women Home Based worker’s issues can get preference in policy issues.
• Write series of articles for a certain period on the issue of Women Entrepreneurship Development, Government role, policy and NGO’s initiatives for women enterprise development
• Media briefings and/or report produced by the fellowship will create evidence to what extend Women Home Based workers can get support from local and national actors from the designing, implementing and lead the quality assistance.

Duration:

• The duration of the Fellowship is for Three months falling between Janurary’19 – March’19.

Eligibility:

• Journalists with demonstrated interest in women empowerment, gender, livelihood, informal worker and development issues in Bangladesh are invited for DSK’s fellowship.
• This is open to both regular and freelance journalists with at least five years experience, from mainstream media including print, electronic, radio, online media and news agencies/wires to study, analyze and report on the issues mentioned above.
• The working language will be English/Bengali.
• 3 years experience of media fellowship/case story writing/ article writing 

Task Implementation Plan and expected outputs:

The deliverables from the Fellowship over the three-month award period will comprise

• Two print or TV/audio stories for every fellow
• An anthology of the disseminated/published/aired News-Clips/Video Footage to DSK
• A summary report on the activities and feedback on the Media Fellowship Program on Empowering Women for Sustainable Livelihoods.

Dushtha Shasthya Kendra (DSK) is seeking to put credible and substantive information, critical to lives of millions, into the public domain. Therefore, DSK insists that the Fellows follow the highest reporting standards.

DSK will not support any report with inaccurate data or information.  To ensure this, DSK will conduct a review of all outputs before any dissemination. This will also help in closing information gaps in the final outputs.

General Terms and conditions:

• All content will be uploaded on DSK website.
• All content submitted under these fellowships will be under the Creative Commons Licence. DSK has the right to use and/or reproduce wholly or partially the articles/photographs, arising out of the Fellowship Programme, in any of its publications, without any additional payment.
• The support provided by DSK for this Media Fellowships should be suitably acknowledged in all the articles/photos.
• Copyright and ownership of all work will rest with the fellows. Fellows will be named in DSK’s further use of content produced by fellows.

Application procedure:

The application should include the following documents:

• A copy of curriculum vitae (CV)
• Links to any existing publications
• A comprehensive fellowship proposal (in English) outlining:
• Region (district) on which the proposal is focused
• Subject/s and story ideas that the applicant proposes to focus on (1000 words maximum)
• Tentative travel plans, budget and time
• Three references along with recommendation/nomination letters from each of concerned individuals (Editor/news editor/chief news editor)

Disbursement of Fellowship money:
Payments will be disbursed in two installments:

Selected fellows will each receive a total stipend of BDT 88,000 (excluding all taxes and subject to total deductions at source) in the given period of three months.

Payments will be disbursed in two installments:

Selection criteria:

For more information please contact:

Tahmina Kabir
Project Coordinator
Empowering Women and Building Sustainable Livelihoods in Urban Bangladesh
E-mail: jloxfam_pm@dskbangladesh.org