On Tuesday, HPC held its first meeting with the National Strategy for Demographic Media (2018-2022) liaison officers and representatives of different relevant national entities for the purpose of developing the strategy's executive work plan for (2019-2020) and general monitoring and evaluation framework.
The strategy, developed by HPC in cooperation with national partners, aims to develop media agenda to support the national efforts aiming to achieve and invest in the demographic opportunity by building professional media capabilities specialized in the field of population and development, providing high-quality population information and facilitating the media’s access to them, developing the media’s role in creating a supportive political, institutional and legislative environment for the demographic opportunity and fostering the role of media in awareness-raising for individuals and the society to adopt supportive population attitudes.
The strategy is designed around the idea of having an active Jordanian media that is influential in creating development-supporting community attitudes and behaviors and capable of positively impacting population and development policies. It also seeks to promote community access to demographic information and affect the behaviors and attitudes of the Jordanian public and public policies through a professional media that helps them improve the quality of life.
HPC Secretary, Dr. Amawi, affirmed that the strategy development and implementation is in line with HPC’s belief in the key role played by the media in supporting HPC’s efforts to face population and development challenges and issues in the community in order to achieve the well-being of citizens in different areas. She indicated that there is an urgent need to build efficient, professional and comprehensive demographic media considering that these issues are yet to be adequately addressed in Jordanian media and efforts to make them priorities in the eyes of the community and country remain unsuccessful.
Amawi stated that the main reason behind developing the strategy was realizing how important it is to promote the media’s role in supporting population policies and integrating the demographic dimension and changes in the economic and social planning process on both the national and local levels which entail having adequate policies concerned with the demographic structure and its changes and implications on the education, training, employment, health, resource distribution and other needs. Another reason behind the strategy was the great population increase as a result of the current instability in the Arab Region.
Amawi stressed the importance of joining national efforts and working together to implement the strategy in a manner that serves population and development issues and policies.
Proposed interventions by relevant national entities were discussed during the meeting and included in the strategy’s executive plan for (2019-2020). Furthermore, a general framework for the strategy’s monitoring and evaluation was introduced the post-implementation steps were agreed upon.
