Bangkok, October 29, 1999 -- As I write this, the UN-ESCAP 'High-level Intergovernmental Meeting to Review Regional Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action' is drawing to a close. As the countries have presented their reports, and the expert panels finished presenting their research findings and recommendations, the country delegations are meeting to approve the final report. This will be the official account of what governments in the Asia and Pacific region have done in the years since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.
This also means that my work here is done. I am in Bangkok on the invitation of Isis International-Manila, an international NGO that focuses on information sharing and communications networking for women. Isis is implementing a project funded by UNIFEM, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, to improve media coverage of the entire 'Beijing + 5' review process. This project, called the 'Women's Media Team,' is unique in that it seeks to fulfill two different, some might even say contradictory, goals.
One is of course to ensure that the issues being raised and debated in this regional meeting, as well as the entire process of reviewing the Beijing commitments, receive the media play they deserve. The other goal is to provide training to members of women's NGOs in the region on news coverage and reportage, and developing relations with the media. To be honest, when the proposal was first put to me, my first instinct was to turn it down, fearful that if I accepted, we'd end up meeting neither of these ends. But, one of my biggest concerns in this "two-hatted" life as a media professional and a woman activist has been improving relations between the media and the NGO community. And here was an opportunity precisely to weave these two concerns.
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OF COURSE, we can only tell if the project succeeded when we finally get to check how much play the coverage of the event got in the mainstream media not just in Thailand but in our home countries.
But right now, I can testify to how hard everyone on the team worked, especially since we found out upon our arrival that few people knew about what we were trying to do, and that the responsibility for generating media interest in this regional review meeting would be falling mainly on our shoulders.
It has been a delight working with women from around the region, many of them unfamiliar with media work and at first beset with insecurities and a sense of inadequacy. One of the things I hope we've accomplished is that the trainers have given them a sense of confidence about their ability to deal with the media.
The "women's media team," as we've dubbed ourselves, is composed of Babita Basnet of Sancharika Samuha of Nepal, Adelle Khan of the Fiji Women's Crisis Center, Ung Vanna of the Khmer Women's Voice Center of Cambodia, Lim Siu Ching, All Women's Action Society of Malaysia, and Fatmawati Salapuddin of the Bangsa Moro Women and Development Foundation, based in Cotabato, and Chitraporn Vanaspong, the media relations officer of ECPAT, a regional organisation combatting the sex trafficking of children, who acted as our liaison with the Thai media.
Aside from myself, the other editor on the team is Suchita Venturi of the Women's Feature Service, who had been a journalist with mainstream publications, mainly business papers, for many years in India before joining WFS as an editor. And of course, assisting us in all our needs were the women from Isis - Mavic Cabrera-Balleza and Lorna Israel. I'd also like to thank as well the women in UNIFEM's regional office for East and Southeast Asia, particularly regional programme adviser Lorraine Corner, for their trust in us and unstinting support.
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Suchita had an interesting insight the night our group first met. "I've found out in my experience," she said, "that between getting mainstream women journalists to write about women's issues, and getting women activists to write for the media, it is far easier to work with women who already have the perspective and care personally about the issues."
This is an observation validated by experience in the last few days. Though the women approached their work with much trepidation and a sinking feeling of inadequacy, we invariably found their copy to be reflective of their own commitment to and understanding of the issues. "Perspective," as well as a sense of a personal stake in what one is writing about, is something that cannot be "trained" into you. It must spring from the heart and from experience.
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THURSDAY evening, for our "celebratory" dinner, the Isis women decided we should go to a vegetarian restaurant in the suburbs of Bangkok. Called the "Green Restaurant," the place was supposed to be a haven for health-food lovers, a place, in Mavic's heartfelt words, "to fall in love with."
We happened to ride with Chitraporn in her car, and found ourselves crossing the length of Bangkok, as the area where the restaurant is happens to be the site of fairly development, rice fields now dotted with rows of townhouses, many of which stand empty, testament to the impact of the Asian economic crisis.
After more than 20 minutes circling round the subdivision streets in search of the "Green Restaurant," or at least of a place which would be popular among the NGO crowd, we spotted a huge hulking figure beside a market stall. To our surprise, it turned out to be a live elephant, and the site of it, live and walking down the street, was enough to make mine and Fatma's day.
Still, the "Green Restaurant," when we finally found it, turned out indeed to be a peaceful vegetarian oasis in this hectic city. One of many discoveries in this trip full of adventures.
(This piece also comes out in the column "At large" in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.)
*The Women's Media Team for the ESCAP High-level Intergovernmental Meeting to Review the Beijing Platform for Action is composed of Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, Lorna Israel, Isis International-Manila; Suchita Vemuri, Women's Features Service; Babita Basnet, Sancharika Samuha-Nepal ; Adelle Khan, Fiji Women's Crisis Centre; Ung Vanna, Khmer Women's Voice Centre; Lim Siu Ching, All Women's Action Society-Malaysia; Fatmawati Salapuddin, Bangsa Moro Women and Development Foundation-Philippines; Rina Jimenez-David, Philippines; Chitraporn Vanaspong, Thailand. The Women's Media Team is co-ordinated by Isis International-Manila and is supported by UNIFEM.
