A Freedom of Information (FOI) Help Desk and Advocacy tool kit were yesterday launched by the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC).
According to a release from the MIC, the Help Desk and Advocacy Toolkit are available at www.mediainstituteofthecaribbean.com and submissions are now open. The FOI project is funded by UK AID.
The release said that the Help Desk is a cloud-based, secure platform for journalists, civil society organisations and private individuals to submit their FOI /Access to Information (ATI) requests to the MIC. These requests would be reviewed by MIC’s support staff who will provide guidance to and advise applicants on how to address denials, implement follow up steps and any other course of action.
“MIC guarantees strict confidentiality as we commit to ensuring the safety of individuals contact information and related correspondence”, the release said.
The Help Desk is one aspect of MIC’s FOI project which seeks to monitor and document press freedom violations in the English-speaking Pan-Caribbean region. It also aims to provide advisory legal opinions to journalists when this freedom is being violated or is in danger.
The Advocacy Toolkit was written by journalist and lawyer Dionne Jackson-Miller and includes research points, letter templates and lists of support organisations.
President of the MIC, Kiran Maharaj, in lauding the tools, pointed to the “necessity for journalists in the region to have better support and advice in an era where investigative journalism underpins our democracy and where the propagation of disinformation plagues our societies.”
