In Lesotho the GMBS workshop brought together media practitioners, NGOs and the Ministry of Communications. The meeting was opened by the Minister of Gender, Youth and Sports, Mé ‘Mathabiso Lepono who challenged the meeting to discuss the issues identified in the GMBS. The meeting mandated MISA Lesotho to oversee the implementation of the plan of action. They decided to postpone the selection of two activities to show case at the Gender and Media Summit to a later date because they needed time to digest their action plan. As a follow up another GMBS meeting was held for Editors at the Press Club where the findings were presented. The Chapter during the monthly Press Club meetings held a session dedicated to gender mainstreaming that was preceded by a gender awareness march during 16 days of activism against gender based violence. 3.3.3 MISA Malawi Gender Activities Following the GMBS launch, a workshop on the report was held in July 2003 at which a number of activities were identified for Malawi to implement. NAMISA has started to address some of the issues and some of the activities were lined up to be done included: • Holding follow -up workshops in Lilongwe and Mzuzu and to make the public aware of the study and its findings • Holding panel discussions on the radio • Engaging editors to establish guidelines for reporting to encourage journalists to interview both men and women as news sources When the task force on gender met to discuss the activities it was agreed that if gender coverage was to improve, the starting point should be the media practitioners themselves. Hence there was a shift in the programme to focus on training of journalists. Two gender and media training workshops for journalists drawn from both print and electronic media were held in Blantyre, Mzuzu and Lilongwe. A total of 18 participants were invited to each workshop. For the Lilongwe workshop, some participants came from Mzuzu. The workshops were highly successfully. Apart from sensitizing journalists about the GMBS report and what gender is all about, they were also imparted with skills on how to analyze stories from a gender perspective and also how they can streamline gender in their stories. This was ably done by going through practical exercises, analyzing local stories from local newspapers and plenary discussions. A debate was held on Capital FM on gender and media on 7th February, 2004. Some other activities like gender editorial policy were not done due to limited time and human resources. These will be dealt with during the next implementation phase. MISA Annual Report (April 2003 – March 2004) 17