TAHAQAQ: A SUPPORT « TAYLOR MADE »
On the evening of the 2020 awards ceremony last December, MEDIA LOVES TECH left Tahaqaq with a commitment: strengthen the promising capacities of the Moroccan fact-checking team. Ten meetings and thirty hours of exchanges with a dozen of international specialists! It is now done! During the month of March, the winners of the Young Talent Award will have benefited from MEDIA LOVES TECH’s network of experts, in order to take them to the next level.
In consultation with the young entrepreneurs of Tahaqaq, MEDIA LOVES TECH has designed a series of taylor-made events to meet specific needs: capacity building, social media, business development and management… After a year of activity on Facebook and Instagram – and a five-digit number of followers -, The best moment to take time to reflect and imagine the future. Over two meetings, Mohamed Ezzouak, founder of the Moroccan news portal Yabiladi, provided valuable insight into the characteristics of the local market. With the help of Chekib Abdallah and Martin Vogl, trainers for the DW Akademie, he helped the team to (re)define its objectives and to draw up possible development paths. “It is very pleasant to accompany a high-potential project in its scaling phase,” says Mohamed Ezzouak, “especially as the Tahaqaq team is a studious and committed team”.
Tahaqaq then met up with business coach Amina Ellouze, who had already supported the 12 teams in the #MLT2020 program. The meeting with this specialist in organisational change made sense at a time when Tahaqaq’s effectives are expanding.
Strengthening the core business
Knowing where you are going and how you want to work is one thing, but improving your know-how is another. So, Tahaqaq has also learned the way to get the best out of social media. How? By learning about storytelling and learning how to analyse the information generated by the traffic on his networks. Two topics have been explored with Yasmina El Gannabi, Audience Development Manager at DW.
And of course, several training sessions dealt with the heart of Tahaqaq’s business: the fact-checking. With Rachel Baig and Joscha Weber, DW’s fact-checking team, Tahaqaq was able to learn about the working methods of a professional team. With Egyptian journalist Mohamed Kassab (Matsda2sh), the Moroccan team reviewed current fact-checking tools. Finally, they were also able to follow a training session on the theme of source verification led by Malek Khadhraoui (Al Khatt) and completed by a webinar with the investigative journalist Ahmed Al-Shami (BBC Arabia).
The richness of an international network
For the fact-checker Yasmine Laabi, the intense cycle of reinforcement “met all of Tahaqaq’s expectations and needs”. Yasmine was able to fully appreciate “the great contribution of professionals in the field” and to taste the richness of the MEDIA LOVES TECH ecosystem: a network of committed and devoted experts, always with pedagogy and in a good mood!
