By Vidhya Salluri
Kathmandu, September 22, 2020: The Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd organized a nine-day online course on journalism to enhance its members’ communication skills.
Around 20 nuns attended the September 13-21 course on “News Writing and Reporting” conducted by the National Institute of Social Communications, Research and Training (NISCORT) situated at Vaishali in the National Capital Region.
The participants belonged to the congregation’s Central East India Nepal province.
Sister Pushpa Louis, the provincial, said the course aimed to enhance her sisters’ writing and reading skills. The 12-hour online program comprised 18 sessions held on Zoom, she added.
This was the second program the congregation organized for its members during the nationwide lockdown, said Sister Louis, who was a participant of the second batch.
The main resource person was Sumit Dhanraj, communication and media trainer at NISCORT. He taught the participants how to compose creative headings and write paragraphs, articles, and news reports. The course also dealt with reading and analyzing and basics of reporting skills, interview techniques, different types of communication and media, and writing letters to the editor.
The course also provided awareness about fake news, sloppy journalism, modern trends in journalism and citizen journalism.
Sister Louis said she has received positive feedback of the course from her nuns.
“The course increased my taste to read the newspaper and its various write-ups, features, editorial, and articles. It helped me to write creative titles and quality reports. It also boosted my reading, writing and researching skills,” the provincial told Matters India.
Sister Udaya Kondaveeti, a hostel in-charge in Chennai, Tamil Nadu said she found the sessions interactive and skill based along with practical experience. “Regular assignments and feedback were useful to understand my learning and progress,” she said.
Sister Precilla Noronha, a social worker at Garratola in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, said she found it easy to follow new methods in writing reports, articles and feature articles. “The study materials were useful to build passion for writing, to make catchy headings and to develop reading habit.”
Another participants Sister Annie Thomas, headmistress of the Good Shepherd School at Maharashtra’s Karjat town, said the course helped understand “the ethics of journalism” and to analyze articles in newspapers properly.
Father Robinson Rodrigues, the new interim director of the NISCORT Media College, in the concluding session said, “In today’s scenario, it’s necessary to have analytical perspective while reading newspapers to understand news. It is important to differentiate between good news and false news.”