Meet Senior Technical Partner: Internews

The Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening is the prime recipient of the United States Agency for International Development’s Democratic Elections and Political Processes Leader with Associates Award.  Under this award, our three core institutes (the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, the International Republican Institute, and the National Democratic Institute) are joined by four senior technical partners (STP) which include: The American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative, the Center for International Private Enterprise, Democracy Arch, and Internews. This is an introduction to the first of these four partners.

USAID/CEPPS DEPP Award Senior Technical Partner – Internews

Internews is an international non-profit organization that empowers people worldwide with trustworthy, high-quality news and information they need to make informed decisions, participate in their communities, and hold power to account.

For 40 years, in more than 100 countries, Internews has worked to build healthy media and information environments where they are most needed.

Under the DEPP Award, Internews will contribute to the consortium’s work to promote inclusive, accountable, and representative governments that deliver for all people.

As the consortium’s lead on media-related work, Internews will tackle:

• Training and supporting independent journalists, media outlets, and traditional media-focused CSOs to provide timely, impartial, and fact-based information to citizens, and hold accountable elected officials and government institutions
• Strengthening and supporting advocacy related to freedom of the press
• Strengthening the critical consumption of news
• Information disorder (dis/mis/mal-information), as it pertains to independent media
• Digital and physical safety and security training and capacity building for independent journalists and media
• Strengthening media business models and financial sustainability of media outlets

Internews has a decades-long history of supporting independent media in extremely challenging contexts, including during major local, regional, and national political transitions and elections around the globe.

In 2018, with USAID support and as a CEPPS member, Internews launched the Sierra Leone Elections Dialogue Series project to help promote issue-based public dialogue and support local media during the 2018 elections and post-election period. Through a series of round tables and dialogue sessions, the program increased the participation of key Sierra Leonean media institutions and a broad cross-section of the CSO community representing women, youth, and people with disabilities – all in support of a peaceful democratic election during the 2018 election cycle.

Visit Internews.org to learn more about how this STP empowers people worldwide with trustworthy, high-quality news and information, or listen to the first episode of Democracy! The Podcast, The Power of the Press: Media’s Role in Democracy, with Jeanne Bourgault, President and CEO of Internews.