The School of Journalism & New Media Studies of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) have launched a project “Mapping Journalism Training and Education Institutions in South Asia” to strengthen the media education in the region. The project aims at mapping the institutions engaged in journalism education in the South Asia and identify the potential Centres of Excellence. These centres will be extended UNESCO support with an objective to develop them as potential resource base for media education and training in their respective countries.

Thus the immediate objective of the project is to build sustainable centres of excellence and the larger goal is to build capacity of these centres to become facilitators of media development in their region. The core objective is to strengthen the institutions that will facilitate training and equipping journalists with highest professional standards.
Inspired by these ideals and the success of a similar project undertaken in Africa by UNESCO in collaboration with the prestigious Rhodes University’s School of Journalism and Media Studies and L’Ecole superieure de journalism de Lille (ESJ), IGNOU and UNESCO aim to map out the promising schools of journalism in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bhutan.