The Liberia Media Center (LMC) works in the areas of media development, access to information, transparency and accountability, and peacebuilding in Liberia. LMC fosters local development through the utilisation of communication and information sources. LMC exists to assist media and civil society with professional services in a wide range of areas, including research, training, outreach and mass communication. The mission and goals of the organisation are: To improve media capacity towards strengthening democracy and sustaining peace through the utilising of communication and information resources by working with local and international partners. A secured, peaceful and democratic Liberia in which there exists an independent media, a culture of free expression and access to information.
Major achievements/Success
Over the past eleven years LMC has worked in Liberia to foster transparency and accountability. In May 2015, the LMC released its first report, covering 2004, on the state of Liberia's implementation of its Freedom of Information law. The center is currently carrying out the second phase of the monitoring to cover 2015.
From 2007 to 2015 in partnership with the Radio Netherlands Training Center (RNTC) and IREX, the LMC provided training and equipment support to around 25 community radio stations located in 13 of Liberia's 15 counties. The center's intervention has also included developing the human resource capacity mainstream media organizations in the capital, Monrovia.
Since 2012, the LMC has been involved with tracking government\'s development projects as they relate to expenditures under the national budget. With funding from Trust Africa, OSIWA and IREX, this initiative has made budget numbers openly available, for the first time in Liberian history, to anyone with a mobile phone. It is free for mobile users to request updated budget numbers from the project\'s database. Another component of this project allows people in Gbarnga, Buchanan, Ganta, Voinjama, and Monrovia to participate in opinion polls on issues that affect their communities.
The LMC with support from the European Union has recently concluded a peacebuilding project in universities and community colleges in Monrovia, Bong County, Grand Bassa County, Nimba County, and Lofa County. As a result of this project, a course on peace building was developed and is now being taught at community colleges in Grand Bassa, Nimba and Lofa counties.
The LMC has also worked with Trocaire, with funding from the EU, in Bong, Nimba, Grand Bassa and Lofa counties.
The LMC with the support of Toronto-based Journalists for Human Rights (JHR), between 2008 and 2012 provided training and support to dozens of Liberian journalists under the organisation's "Good Governance through Strengthened Media" project. The project not only provided rights media training for working journalists, it also worked with the University of Liberia's journalism school to develop and introduce a rights media curriculum at the school.
In 2011, the LMC played a major part in efforts aimed at ensuring transparent elections in Liberia. Thanks to the effort, the elections were peaceful and the outcome was respected, despite claims of fraud from the opposition. LMC believe the initiative inspired a huge degree of trust from the public for the work of the organisation. Through a state-of-the-art computer resource facility, LMC provides daily access to working resources for Liberian journalists and media professionals at four Community Multimedia Centers established in four of Liberia\'s fifteen counties. Similar facilities are also available at the organisation's headquarters in Monrovia.
