With the government being convinced an empowered, highly professional and highly skilled media fraternity” will augur well for Guyana’s democracy, Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for Public Affairs Kwame Mc Coy yesterday officially announced the launch of the Guyana Media and Communication Academy through which media workers are expected to access over 2,000 online courses.
The launching of the Academy was done on the first day of a two-day conference and symposium organised by the Office of the Prime Minister to mark World Press Freedom Day at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre.
While Mc Coy talked up the Academy, which he boasted can facilitate the bridging of the many skills and learning gaps that exist, President of the Guyana Press Association Nazima Raghubir said that the association does not support the facility as a standalone intervention.
“We do not support the idea of the Guyana Media and Communication Academy as a standalone entity,” she said during her address at the opening session of the conference.
Instead, she said the GPA proposes that the resources be put into further strengthening the University of Guyana’s Centre for Communication Studies through which tertiary level recognised credits can be awarded.
“The University of Guyana, for its part, should make adequate provision for the training of technical and engineering personnel in all areas of broadcasting,” she posited.
The GPA head also said that media houses can provide the resources for practical aspects of such tertiary training.
“We support the intent of continuous training and the GPA stands ready and willing to endorse and provide such training through the established and accredited University of Guyana,” the GPA head stated.
According to McCoy, the Academy would allow practitioners and the fraternity as a whole to grow and flourish hand in hand with the country.
“What started out as an active consideration for the establishment of a Broadcasting Academy as was intimated in my 2021 budget presentation in the National Assembly, has evolved fulsomely into what will be the groundbreaking Guyana Media and Communication Academy,” he indicated.
And to ensure that the Academy facilitates “world class learning and certification across the widest possible spectrum of industry related areas of study,” the Minister said there is a partnership with the virtual learning platform Coursera to make it a dynamic virtual institution of reputable credence.
He shared that through this collaboration, every single media practitioner at every level of the media spectrum in Guyana and in the diaspora will have access on an annual basis to learning licences paid for by the Government of Guyana. The licences will allow media workers to peruse and pursue selections from among more than 2,000 world class courses at various levels of certification from leading partner universities in the world, including Ivy League institutions.
And he said the facility’s Continuous Media Education Programme will allow for the streamlining of graduates into professional grades of practice at the level of professional, specialist and expert practitioner, based on successful completion of prescribed menus of courses “on the learning platform, accessible through the licences.”
“Over the coming years, we will redouble all efforts again and again to achieve productive synergies across the interdependent continuum of Government and Media, but today, let’s lay this new foundation stone than can potentially transform the frail structures that currently exist, into superstructures that can both adapt to and withstand the dynamic environments that come with national development,” the minister added.
