Journalists for Human Rights

Background

Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) uses innovative and proven techniques to reduce human rights abuses. By building the capacity of the media to report effectively on human rights issues, JHR’s work pressures abusers to stop and empowers victims to fight back. Since its founding in May 2002, JHR has run projects in several African countries and in Canada.

In Canada, JHR has established 15 Chapters at journalism schools across the country, actively engaging over 10% of Canada’s journalism students in human rights reporting. JHR has offices in Accra, Ghana and Toronto, Canada.

Full Description

This grant was to support the University Chapters Program, which trains the next generation of Canadian journalists to report more effectively on human rights issues. This project sought to achieve this objective through significant growth in Chapter membership, generating an increasing number of journalism students across Canada involved in human rights reporting. The grant focused on:

• increasing the number of chapters and students per chapter, and increasing the number of hours volunteered per student
• promoting a more diverse and inclusive approach, by reaching out to a wider range of communities and to a greater number of Francophone students
• equipping young Canadian journalists to provide fair, accurate and informed reporting of human rights and social justice issues, and fostering links between issues covered by JHR participants and youth-driven community social initiatives.