Citizens of Mozambique Platform - Women, Community Leaders and Local Governance

The number of media in the province of Zambézia is still smaller. The existing countable media use a political lineage in the production of content as a way to guarantee their financial sustainability. This positioning often excludes the minority voices and does not address the problems experienced by the community. In other words, the voices of poor people, women and community leaders do not find space to speak in traditional media.

As part of its first intervention with the support of the MASC Foundation, the Citizens of Mozambique Platform has used the Human Rights Advocacy Journalism approach for three months, producing more than 30 articles in text, audio and video that highlighted the governance problems of the Quelimane City in particular, and the province of Zambézia, with emphasis on the districts of Inhassunge, Mopeia, Namacurra and Mulevala.

The use of this approach is due to the fact that it is an alternative to traditional journalism, which often goes beyond political agendas and adopts an elitist style. In contrast, advocacy Journalism based on Human Rights is based on real facts, is constantly monitoring the public services and seeks to defend the interests of people that little or never find space to give their opinion on their development needs.

In Citizens of Mozambique Platform, women are considered as the main contributors to building healthy, better educated and sustainable communities. Instead of victims, we believe and advocate that women can be powerful community leaders. It is, therefore, believing in this principle that throughout the production of more than 30 articles we privilege the opinion of the woman and the community leaders with focus for kinglet, secretaries and heads of the post.

Garbage management, public and urban transport, access to drinking water, access ways, urbanization, access to health, education, good governance, and others, are some of the themes to which, through the Citizens of Mozambique Platform, women and community leaders left their valuable contributions as a gesture of appeals, complaints and suggestions to the executive of Quelimane and the Province of Zambézia.

The opinions of these women and community leaders were reproduced in the local media (Txopela Newspaper, Diário da Zambezia Newspaper, RM-Zambezia, TV Miramar, TVM and TIM) and distributed by e-mail. The statistics, from the distribution by e-mail, show that more than 24 thousand people read the contents and more than 3 thousand reacted on the contents published. In this group of readers are the different sectors of the Government in Mozambique (District, Province and Central).

The Citizens of Mozambique Platform, in its Gender Integration policy, will continue to privilege the voices of women and other minorities who are never given space to comment or express their feelings about the life of their community. We want to break this cycle and prove that Women like Men, are able to contribute to the development of their community and their country.