An insight into ARIJ - Organisation Background:

ARIJ is the first and leading non-for-profit media foundation, dedicated to promoting investigative journalism across the Arab world. Since 2006, ARIJ has grown to train and work with investigative journalists from 16 Arab countries from the Middle East and North Africa. It became the mother-network that joins regional investigative journalism efforts, including supporting fact-checkers and whistleblowers. Despite all imposed threats and challenges, it remains the number one support to its journalists who practise their craft to tell important stories, hold those in power accountable, foster a better informed public, and restore trust in media. 


For 15 years, and with its firm belief in independent, accountable and professional investigative journalism, ARIJ has cultivated a culture for Arab journalists to grow and develop skills, acquire new knowledge, tools and techniques, and advance professionally in an increasingly restricting media landscape. Today, ARIJ strives to deepen the ecosystem of accountable investigative journalism in the Arab World despite the political, legal and social challenges. 


ARIJ, as a regional organisation, wears multiple interconnected hats;

(1) a training organisation, 

(2) empowering investigative journalists on their investigative content, 

(3) networking and building collaborative bridges. 


Since its establishment in Jordan, it has trained more than 4400 journalists and supported 700 quality investigations. In the past five years, it won over 65 local, regional and international awards. By partnering with more than 50 partners all over the world, ARIJ facilitates networking for journalists and media experts through its in-person and online training workshops and events and its popular annual forum, which in 2021, has hosted more than 3700 hybrid participation from over 50 countries. In its 15 years of experience, ARIJ has produced two manuals, one university curriculum and four self-paced online courses completed by over 30,000 beneficiaries.


ARIJ in Action


As a training institution, ARIJ offers physical and virtual workshops in addition to online courses. The level of training varies from basic to advanced, specialised, and academic. With its extensive experience, ARIJ covers theoretical and hands-on topics; including basics of investigative journalism, fact-checking, open-source, follow the money, digital security, data journalism, human rights among others, in addition to its academic university curriculum. ARIJ, as well, provides four online courses available for all journalists at their own pace. These courses cover Introduction to Investigative Journalism, Digital Storytelling, Psycho-emotional Health and Wellbeing and Safety Training.


ARIJ walks hand in hand with its journalists, not only through training, but supporting them through mentoring, coaching, and providing legal aid to produce quality investigative reports. From hypothesis formulation to publishing, ARIJ ensures that journalists, from different career levels, acquire the maximum knowledge and the optimum experience through every step of the process. This approach has built a true community of skilled, passionate journalists in the Middle East: Participation in an ARIJ training, workshop, or collaborative editorial project is not only one-of-an experience for most participants, but an initiation into the community of ARIJeans that provides career-spanning support and connection.


Moreover, ARIJ stimulates connections, partnerships, collaborations, and networking opportunities for Arab investigative journalists and its media partners. With its unique regional identity, ARIJ has proved to be a catalyst for building bridges between IJ centres, media outlets, and journalists. ARIJ is a member of GIJN (Global Investigative Journalism Network) and works frequently with ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) on cross-border investigations including the latest Pandora Papers, along with other strategic international partners as GFMD, BBC, and France24.


Funding Sources:


As an NGO, ARIJ operates based on philanthropic support. It has strategic donors who have supported its mission since day one; which are International Media Support (IMS), Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), and Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA). Over the years, and recently, more core donors joined and contributed to the growth of ARIJ including Open Society Foundation (OSF), Wikimedia Foundation, Sigrid Rausing Trust and Humanity United. 


ARIJ also is supported by other international donors from Europe, US along with the Scandinavian countries on regional projects with donors like National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Open Society Foundation (OSF), German Embassy, Norwegian Embassy, Free Press Unlimited (FPU) and Meta Journalism Project and on local projects that focus on Jordan like Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour (DRL), United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), and Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands. The latter donors mainly support projects of specific outcomes in addition to core costs relevant to the project’s implementation. 


Other main donors are Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty (FNF), L’Agence française de développement médias (CFI), European Commission, SKUP, Swedish Institute (SI).