Before joining the face-t-face training, participants had to undergo a Covid-19 test.

Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the first the course in Kathmandu started with a lot of attention given to hygienic measures and safety standards. The course was planned as a blended-learning course with a lot of e-learning in it anyway last year. But now for the face-to-face phase, all participants gathered in Kathmandu and as a group had to go into seclusion for seven days.

The training consisted of many practical exercises. whenever particpants faced a challenge, the local trainers in the room could assist.

Before, participants and organisers had to stay at home for a week and were tested the day before the start of the workshop, and when the test came out negative, they could join classes. Interlink’s trainers and organiser conducted the course online, while two local trainers were present in the classroom.

Interlink Academy’s Claus Hesseling directed the training via Zoom and with various other communication tools from Hamburg.

Particpants stayed together for the whole duration of this phase, without any physical contact to family and friends. Even the food was given to them contactlessly. In the evenings, participants gathered for fun games and chatting. And they could see the positive side of all this hussle: “We’ve got to know each other very well and build a strong network of data journalists”, one journalist said.

After three months of intensive learning, the participating journalists happily celebrated their success.

The next batch in this data journalism project will start training in December. Applications from all over Nepal are welcome and should be sent to our partner Center for Media Reserch – Nepal.

The Data-Journalism-for-Nepal project is sponsored by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.