A technical workshop bringing together journalists, researchers, and educators was held July 25-26, 2024, at the Centre de Recherche en Ressources en Eau du Bassin du Congo (CRREBaC), part of the University of Kinshasa.
The primary objective of the workshop was to explore collaborative opportunities among journalists, researchers, and educators to enhance educational resources related to the ocean and the environment, thereby supporting student learning at the primary and secondary levels.
During the two-day workshop, participants explored articles supported by the Pulitzer Center, an exercise that allowed them to familiarize themselves with the Center's work on the ocean and other underreported issues.
Since 2022, teachers have been encouraged to use these articles as lessons or illustrations to enrich their pedagogies. The teachers who attended the workshop shared their experience of how they have used selected articles to enrich their lessons, and how they have raised awareness in the school community of the urgency and necessity of protecting the environment.
At the conclusion of the workshop, a set of recommendations was formulated. Notably, one key recommendation was the establishment of a collaborative framework to facilitate ongoing exchanges among researchers, educators, and journalists. A WhatsApp group was created to enable participants to continue sharing ideas and insights after the workshop.
This technical workshop emerged from the Pulitzer Center ocean conference organized in 2023 along with CRREBaC and the Directorate of School Curricula and Teaching Materials (DIPROMAD). The conference identified a gap in terms of up-to-date educational content on issues of environmental protection, rainforests, the ocean, and climate change.
The Pulitzer Center's previous activities with the DRC's Ministry of Education through DIPROMAD indicate a strong commitment to updating the school curriculum. This commitment was reinforced during the educational content review workshop held in February 2023, where participants emphasized the importance of incorporating environmental education into the curriculum.
Considering the experience shared by the teachers, members of the Congo Basin Teachers Network, an initiative of the Pulitzer Center, the articles by Pulitzer Center Fellows and grantees were used as lessons, as teaching materials, or simply as a reading reference.
Other tools such as Les Explorateurs comic books (inspired by Pulitzer Center-supported rainforest stories) were made available to teachers by the Center and helped to reinforce learning through images.
Ruben Mayoni, a former Rainforest Journalism Fund (RJF) grantee, emphasized the importance of journalism as a reliable source of information.
“Journalists, being direct or indirect witnesses to the events they report on, provide valuable insights and firsthand accounts that enrich the learning experience. Their presence in the field ensures that accurate and up-to-date information is shared with the public," said Mayoni.
Solange Tangamu, also a former RJF grantee, added that using journalism in a classroom is a great innovation that brings students closer to the facts, close to the issues at heart.
“A student who lives in Kananga, for example, can learn a lot about world oceans through a documentary or a news story even if they have never been in Moanda (where the Atlantic Ocean is)."
A presentation by Professor Raphael Thhimanga, director of CRREBaC, demonstrated how collaboration between researchers and journalists could have a double advantage. Journalists could, on one hand, benefit from the data collected and processed with the rigor and method that are characteristics of any good researcher, and on the other hand, journalists would bring factual elements and innovative tools to the researchers' content.
"In terms of education, for example, we can also involve pedagogical institutes to test certain educational tools resulting from the collaboration between journalists and researchers," he said during the workshop.
The workshop participants said they were satisfied with the quality of the exchanges and the shared content. They expressed their wish to see this collaboration implemented as quickly as possible.
"The experts who write the textbooks will have another reliable source of inspiration for their work, thanks to the researcher—teacher—journalist collaboration. And all this is for the good of the Congolese student," said Kundenga Zola Jacques, a member of the DIPROMAD staff.
Understanding the contribution of agroforestry in the preservation of the Congolese forest cover.