Who We TrainWhere We WorkHow We TrainThe GJS PhilosophyThe GJS Difference

GJS works for news, non-profit, corporate and government clients.

We provide private news organizations with security consulting services and training options for staff, freelance journalists and other contributors. We offer non-governmental international organizations management security consulting services along with both general and customized training for overseas-based personnel.

We offer private firms customized training and consulting services to meet their needs.

We work with governmental agencies who meet our standards of transparency, multilateral organizations and private foundations to provide security training to journalists, human rights defenders and others who need it.

GJS provides specially developed safety training to:

Journalists

  • journalists from major media organizations preparing for assignments in high-risk environments around the world.
  • journalists living and working—often with their families—amidst sustained risks in communities worldwide.
  • journalists operating in environments heavy with organized crime.
  • investigative journalists and others requiring specialized security skills.
  • citizen journalists working for new media outlets, loosely-organized networks, or private and public news organizations.

Non-Profit and For-Profit Organizations – Incl. Human Rights Activist Groups & Humanitarian Aid Workers

  • managers, staff, and field contributors who need comprehensive safety training before assignments.
  • teams needing threat and security assessments and relevant and practical security measures.
  • management needing crisis simulation training.

Law Enforcement and Military Personnel

  • policymakers and leaders of law enforcement and military organizations on safely interacting with journalists covering breaking news from civil unrest to armed combat, and on how to interact with civilians in critical situations in a manner that respects human rights.

We only train government personnel that demonstrate a clear commitment to meet international press freedom and human rights standards.

GJS maintains training facilities in the Washington, D.C. area.

We also regularly provide training in New York, Chicago and Miami in the United States, and in cities including Nairobi, Kinshasa, Mexico City, Guatemala City, Istanbul, Moscow and Riga around the world.

We provide training to clients on-location upon request.

GJS researches the specific threats and contingencies facing journalists, human rights activists and others in any particular nation or region prior to training.

For well over a decade, security firms dominated by former military personnel offered a “one-size-fits-all” approach to training journalists emphasizing what the same firms knew best –military combat contingencies. GJS researches needs before training to best serve our trainees.

Battlefield awareness and emergency first-aid remain invaluable for covering combat. But our curriculum is broader. Skills from surveillance detection to cyber-security measures to sexual assault avoidance and more are essential for a host of other situations.

GJS was designed by journalists for journalists and others to offer the support and training that more journalists and other frontline professionals need.

GJS safety training revolves around complex and dynamic scenarios that challenge journalists and others to apply newly introduced skills under stressful conditions to help make them stick.

The simulations are preceded and followed by classroom presentations and discussions, along with group as well as one-on-one guidance.

Other exercises are designed to enhance organizational capacity to handle crisis scenarios.

 

GJS was founded in November 2011 as a new kind of consulting and safety training organization. Comprised of veteran journalists, press freedom advocates and security training professionals, the GJS team shares a commitment to press freedom and human rights. We wholeheartedly support the efforts of journalists and civil society actors to strengthen the free flow of information and the role of human rights; we only accept projects consistent with these values. We train news organizations as well as communities of journalists, human rights defenders, citizen journalists, and aid and NGO (or nongovernmental-organization) workers operating in violent, repressive, criminal or other hostile environments. Our goal is to help individuals help themselves so that they can make informed decisions for their own security.

Ethos

The ethos of GJS is to help individuals, organizations and communities develop, grow and sustain their own best security practices. Rather than simply impart our expertise to others, we help others assume responsibility for their own security. We train people and groups to become aware of diverse threats, prepare for various contingencies, and execute skills to protect themselves.

Commitment to Service

GJS is a for-profit social enterprise firm. Our bottom line explicitly includes social and other goals including serving journalism, human rights and humanitarian communities across nations. Consistent with this social enterprise approach, GJS is committed to:

  • help provide affordable training to freelance journalists and humanitarian professionals on our own and in collaboration with nonprofit grant-making groups;
  • pay all our contractors at living-wage rates;
  • meet environmental goals including providing trainees with GJS water bottles to reduce our use of plastic;
  • partner with for-profit firms and nonprofit groups to achieve shared goals based on mutual respect and fair business dealings.

When it comes to training freelance journalists, GJS is the only full-time, U.S.-based training provider approved by the London-based Rory Peck Trust and the Toronto-based Canadian Forum on Journalism and Trauma, each of which provide grants to freelance journalists for training.

Since 2010, GJS founder and executive director Frank Smyth has also been advising pro bono Voices of Our Future, a new media, citizen journalism and empowerment training program of World Pulse, an action media network powered by women from 185 countries. Smyth serves as well as the President of the Advisory Board of the Emergencies Response Team of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Privacy

We respect the confidentiality of individuals and local groups operating in repressive or criminal environments who fear they could be put at risk by having their organizations or names associated with security training. And we reserve the right to train and help provide individuals and groups with the knowledge and tools they may need to store, share and communicate information safely in any environment.

GJS has become the top, US-based hostile environments training and consulting firm, and a leading provider of training and consulting services around the world. Why are so many leading nonprofit health, development and aid organizations, news outlets including print, broadcast and new media, women’s groups, counter-terrorism organizations, environmental outfits, and government agencies all choosing GJS to meet their training and consulting needs?

Experience

Each of our lead trainers has decades of ground experience whether they draw from military, intelligence, law enforcement, emergency response, self-defense, psycho-social, journalist or NGO backgrounds.

Innovative

Rather than replicate outdated military protocols, we’ve drawn from different sources to design our own training to better suit unarmed humanitarians, journalists and others working in the field.

Cultural Awareness

Our simulation exercises take into account cultural mores and political conditions to develop nuanced scenarios that challenge trainees to make tough decisions.

Pioneering

We were the first to develop training to address sexual assault including different simulation exercises covering both individual and mob attacks, as well as more subtle abuses of friendship or authority.

Integrative

We’ve integrated emotional awareness and self-care into all our training to give trainees the opportunity to learn about their own reactions to stress and how to both identify and manage them.

Forward-Looking

We’ve embraced technology from the start, teaching digital safety hygiene in our HEFAT classes, offering more advanced digital training on demand, and also providing online training options.

State-of-the-Art

We use various, advanced technologies to safely deliver the sounds, smells and pressure waves of combat and terrorist attacks, along with a panoply of other sound effects to enhance simulations.

Live Actors

Rather than use static manikins, we use actors, some wearing state-of-the-art bleeding simulation gear, to give trainees the chance to treat, say, multiple pumping arterial wounds on a screaming patient. We do a few more, more subtle things, too.

We Listen

We listen to both our trainees and clients, and make changes and adjustments to meet their and their organization’s specific needs to keep on providing both a safe and challenging training environment.

We’re Nimble

We love our "Old City" and "Farm" facilities near Washington, but we’ve learned how to travel and still deliver quality, affordable training on-site in cities like Kinshasa, Riga, Bujumbura and Nairobi.

We’re Reasonable

We strive both to keep training affordable and to be flexible in allowing organizations to reschedule or rotate trainees as work demands, usually with little or no penalty.

We Give Back

We help independent human rights defenders, environmental activists and freelance journalists get the training and support they need at reduced rates. Our partners whom we help include World Pulse, a global network of women activists, Ground Truth Project, Waterkeepers Alliance, Overseas Press Club Foundation, Northwestern Medill School of Journalism, and City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. We are also the only full-time, US-based provider approved by both the Rory Peck Trust and Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma.

Experience

Each of our lead trainers has decades of ground experience whether they draw from military, intelligence, law enforcement, emergency response, self-defense, psycho-social, journalist or NGO backgrounds.

Innovative

Rather than replicate outdated military protocols, we’ve drawn from different sources to design our own training to better suit unarmed humanitarians, journalists and others working in the field.

Cultural Awareness

Our simulation exercises take into account cultural mores and political conditions to develop nuanced scenarios that challenge trainees to make tough decisions.

Pioneering

We were the first to develop training to address sexual assault including different simulation exercises covering both individual and mob attacks, as well as more subtle abuses of friendship or authority.

Integrative

We’ve integrated emotional awareness and self-care into all our training to give trainees the opportunity to learn about their own reactions to stress and how to both identify and manage them.

Forward-Looking

We’ve embraced technology from the start, teaching digital safety hygiene in our HEFAT classes, offering more advanced digital training on demand, and also providing online training options.

State-of-the-Art

We use various, advanced technologies to safely deliver the sounds, smells and pressure waves of combat and terrorist attacks, along with a panoply of other sound effects to enhance simulations.

Live Actors

Rather than use static manikins, we use actors, some wearing state-of-the-art bleeding simulation gear, to give trainees the chance to treat, say, multiple pumping arterial wounds on a screaming patient. We do a few more, more subtle things, too.

We Listen

We listen to both our trainees and clients, and make changes and adjustments to meet their and their organization’s specific needs to keep on providing both a safe and challenging training environment.

We’re Nimble

We love our "Old City" and "Farm" facilities near Washington, but we’ve learned how to travel and still deliver quality, affordable training on-site in cities like Kinshasa, Riga, Bujumbura and Nairobi.

We’re Reasonable

We strive both to keep training affordable and to be flexible in allowing organizations to reschedule or rotate trainees as work demands, usually with little or no penalty.

We Give Back

We help independent human rights defenders, environmental activists and freelance journalists get the training and support they need at reduced rates. Our partners whom we help include World Pulse, a global network of women activists, Ground Truth Project, Waterkeepers Alliance, Overseas Press Club Foundation, Northwestern Medill School of Journalism, and City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. We are also the only full-time, US-based provider approved by both the Rory Peck Trust and Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma.