Summer Safety Initiatives: How ACOS training partnerships are benefitting journalists, filmmakers & photographers
This summer, ACOS partnerships brought safety training to 75 journalists, filmmakers and photographers.
Increasingly, our partnerships include organizations who fund journalism projects or support journalist communities, and who see the value of safety training for their grantees, networks and members. We connect them with trainers and create tailored, no-cost workshops suited to their needs:
Solutions Storytelling Project: Africa | Video Consortium
In July, we worked with Video Consortium to create an online safety workshop for filmmakers selected for their 2026 Solutions Storytelling Project: Africa, which connects filmmakers with social innovators to produce short documentaries that catalyze positive change. This year's fellows - from from DRC, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa - are producing documentaries investigating critical issues such as food security, gender based violence, the environment, healthcare, maternal health and HIV/AIDS.
As part of the project, Video Consortium wanted to help the filmmakers strengthen their safety planning and awareness skills, so we worked with them - and with Sally Fitton, Senior Manager, Field Safety and Security at NPR - to create a tailored ninety minute workshop. Sally walked participants through safety management processes to help them understand the context of their stories, identify hazards, analyse risks and develop their own action plans.
Joop Swart Masterclass | World Press Photo
Photographers selected for World Press Photo's prestigious Joop Swart Masterclass program benefit from a year of masterclasses, talks and mentorships focussed on story development and careers guidance. In recent years WPP has worked with ACOS to include safety and self care.
Our August workshop covered the fundamentals of safety planning - including the importance of mental health and trauma-informed practices - and the key essentials of good digital and physical safety. Participants were also given resources, techniques and frameworks to help them apply what they learned to their own work, and offered a one to one safety clinic to discuss their own specific needs and situations.
Staying Safe in an Evolving Environment | IPAEA
Also in August, working with safety and risk expert Ephraim Muchemi, ACOS delivered a safety workshop for members of the International Press Association of East Africa, a representative body for 100's of journalists working for international media in the region.
The workshop, attended by 20 journalists, focussed on how to stay safe in an evolving environment, and walked participants - a mix of correspondents, local journalists and freelancers operating across East Africa and the Horn - through risk assessment, digital threat reduction and incident management with particular attention given to the needs of freelancers. As part of the training, participants were introduced to an offline risk assessment tool and to an emergency and resource mapping tool.
Participants told us the workshop had changed the way that they approach safety and felt more confident in their understanding of risk assessments and building resilient approaches. Asked what they would start, stop and keep doing, participants said they would start adopting more secure messaging and communication tools, start switching to safer browsers and move away from less private options. Many said they would also start tightening their personal safety protocols.
Find safety resources for journalists and editors here
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