Any avid newspaper reader or a keen follower of Jessore businesses would not probably miss out the phenomenal stirs that different sectors had in past one year only because of increased media focus on problems and prospects the Jessore industries faced over the years.
These development – be it in fishery sector or in floriculture – no matter, all happened due to a epoch-making combined efforts by SME-development project Katalyst, local media and business development organisation – Management and Resources Development Initiative (MRDI) and the journalist and business community of Jessore.
By partnering with Katalyst, MRDI played a catalytic role in helping both the Jessore media and businesses to thrive through innovating initiatives of grouping enthusiastic Jessore reporters under the banner of Business Reporters’ Network (BRN), imparting skill development training and business-exposures to them, facilitating media-business interactions and also providing in-house trainings to two leading Jessore dailies.
Both through formation of a business reporters’ network (BRN) and through imparting in-house trainings at a few selected Jessore dailies, MRDI helped infuse confidence in Jessore newsmen on writing good business and financial reports.
This initiative not only raised the profiles of the individual reporters and their media outlets but also helped Jessore businesses to break through the barriers and grow further thereby, generating more income and job opportunities for the rural poor.
Just to cite two glaring examples of how trained up business journalists helped some of the most promising business sectors of Jessore by projecting the naked truths.
It was an open secret that a section of law enforcers used to extort illegal tolls from transports carrying fish fries from Jessore to rest of the country. Again it was a nagging problem for Jessore florists that they did not exists in the eyes of commercial banks as a formal sector credit-worthy.
Both these issues were resolved just in recent months courtesy quality reports published by Jessore reporters, working for both local and national media outlets, projecting the problems going at the bottoms of these man-made problems.
Now Jessore hatcheries no longer need to grease the palms of greedy cops and Jessore’s burgeoning flower growing industry has got at a few banks approaching them with credit lines.
