The School of Communication of the University of Navarra has presented the Program for the Americas, an initiative aimed at Latin American communicators who wish to broaden their training. On February 25, more than a hundred Latin American journalists and media executives came to Pamplona to analyze the state of information in their countries and to show their support for the new Program for the Americas.

Danilo Arbilla, director of the weekly 'Búsqueda' (Uruguay) and vice-president of the Inter-American Press Association, stressed the importance of this initiative in the current historical moment: "In the last twenty years, democracy in Latin American countries has been going through serious turbulence. It is necessary to prepare communicators well because they are the main responsible for safeguarding and consolidating democracy in Latin America".

According to Arbilla, "the University of Navarra has chosen a good moment to promote the training program because Latin America is now facing three challenges: technological progress, which requires permanent, almost daily training ; media concentration; and the consolidation of democracies.

The new Program for the Americas is the revival, with a new design, of the Program for Latin American Graduates (PGLA) that existed at the University of Navarra between 1972 and 1989. In those years, 389 graduates from 14 countries took part in the program and many more completed their training in other ways.

José Luis Orihuela, director of the Program for the Americas, explained the main lines of the new offer. "The new program is an academic programs of postgraduate courses that will be supported by a financing system based on programs of study scholarships".

These scholarships will finance the enrollment and the stay of students who take up the following offers of the School of Communication: five places for the doctorate in Public Communication, five places for the Master's Degree in Communication Business management and ten places in different specialization programsessay and journalistic editing, multimedia communication, graphic design , institutional communication, etc.).

In addition, five Latin American journalists will be able to take the future master's degrees that the School will launch in the coming years (Screenwriting and Audiovisual Production, Advertising Creativity and Digital Communication). In total, the organizers hope to progressively offer twenty-five places for Latin American journalists, distributed among the three levels of training doctorate, Master's Degree and specialization program).

As for financing, Professor Orihuela explained that "we have asked different Spanish and Latin American communication companies to sponsor the Program for America by providing financial support for up to five scholarships". The relationship between companies from both continents gave its first results in this meeting on February 25 and 26, as the conclusions of the work 'The state of communication in Latin America', carried out by specialists from ten countries, were presented.