28 Mar 2025 WACC North America affirms focus on gender justice and migrant rights, elects board

At its 2025 Annual General Meeting, WACC’s regional association in North America affirmed its commitments to furthering communication rights in the areas of gender justice, digital justice, and migrant rights, and held elections for its Regional Executive Committee.

WACC North America (WACC-NA) president Susan Jackson Dowd highlighted awareness raising of findings of the region’s first-ever Migrant Media Monitoring Project (MMMP) in 2022 and preparations for the 7th edition of WACC’s Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) in 2025 as strategic focal points of the previous year.

WACC-NA took a first step toward strengthening relationships with other WACC regions in the Western Hemisphere through a virtual meeting with the WACC Caribbean in September 2024, vice-president Gregg Brekke reported.

He said the two regions are exploring the possibility of collaborating on a project around migrant rights and communication rights. WACC-NA is looking to partner with WACC Latin America as well, he added.

Regional participation in the GMMP will be a core focus in 2025, Jackson Dowd said, as WACC-NA aims to contribute to data collection and analysis that will offer fresh insights related to gender issues in the media.

Elections to the Regional Executive Committee

The AGM elected Brekke as president and Jackson Dowd as vice-president, as well as Kelly Martini, personal member from the United States, as a new member of the Regional Executive Committee.

The AGM thanked outgoing REC member Joy Chowdury (personal member, Canada) for his service to the region.