Meru Press Club Pays a Visit to Eldoret Media Hub For Bench Marking
Eldoret Media Hub hosted Meru Press Club in a benchmarking mission with the Uasin Gishu Journalists Association (UGJA).
They had an extensive session where they exchanged ideas on how best to enhance the unity of journalists and advance their welfare as members of the fourth estate.
“We are very happy to be here Eldoret, the purpose of our visit is to benchmark at Eldoret Media Hub because we have been having this idea of setting up a media resource center in Meru town where we are based,” said David Muchui Chairman Meru Press Club.
They expressed their will to facilitate the working environments for journalists from the Mount Kenya region, empower them besides proving a platform for them.
But having tried severally without success, benchmarking was the only viable option that they took.
“As a Media Welfare Organization, we are interested in facilitating our members to do their work in a safe environment, to have an easy time when filing their stories, and also to empower them professionally because of the nature of this industry. Eldoret Media Hub has gone ahead of us and has set the pace with a very successful model of a media center.” Noted David.
Muchui said they tried thinking outside and inside the box without success hence the visit, calling on journalists to embrace unity and working together as this will only not only help them grow as a team and provide other benefits from the Media Council of Kenya.
“Journalists even from our own experience are quite a difficult lot to come and work together. So my appeal is to learn from what Eldoret Media Hub has done where they have been able to surmount their challenges, they have been able to overcome those internal wrangles to do something together. It is possible, we can unite as journalists and ignore those selfish endeavors and start working as a team toward a common goal. I encourage colleagues across the country and in their counties to form associations so as to tap resources from the media council and other nongovernmental organizations.” added the chair.
Hailing the hub for its benefits to the people of Uasin Gishu County and the country at large, the journalists called on other counties to emulate this and provide job opportunities for the youths and other professions.
“Eldoret Media Hub is an example that the country can watch and take as a very good example for job creation. We see the government giving pledges to the youths but this is an example where the youths came together to create jobs for their professions and other professions. I call on the government to support such initiatives to help the country grow economically. Thank you very much for hosting us” Added Dorcas Mbatia vice Chair of Meru Press Club.
Congratulating the Meru Press Club for their efforts, the hosts called upon them to be united and all other journalists’ associations with similar ambitions to create a good working environment for all professions the Uasin Gishu Journalists Association leadership advised.
“We are very happy to host this team from Meru County 012. County 012 is very far from here. To set the record straight, they are the first group of journalists to pay a courtesy call to this office and come and benchmark on how to put an association. It is hard to come together but with resilience, with hope, and with unity, journalists can come together because we are humans before we are journalists,” said Marius Kemboi the Vice Chairman Uasin Gishu Journalist Association.
“There are a lot of stakeholders who are waiting for journalists to be united. Once you come together work will be easy without compromising the profession. I wish to invite all the journalists from all over the country to visit this place and we work together.” Kemboi added.
“I want to congratulate this able team of men and women from the Meru Press Club. We feel honored on this particular day has left many busy activities just for them to be here with us. We are here to learn from one another because we want to take this profession to the next level. We want to bring dignity and respect to the way we work as journalists. We are willing as an association to work with you and other journalists’ associations to be able to create better working conditions for all journalists and the young upcoming journalists who have no working spaces and freelance journalists who are forced to work in cyberspaces.” James Gitaka Chairman Uasin Gishu Journalists Association.
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