Media for Development

Journalism and Early Childhood

 

Infant mortality, child abuse and the functioning of the institute for child care covered the front pages of the Dutch newspapers last year. Abroad, media attention for children’s issues comes less naturally. Six newspaper journalists from developing countries stayed at RNTC in 2010 for a 4-week course. The course is an initiative of the Bernard van Leer Foundation and was organized by RNTC.

 

The young and promising journalists were already active on child and youth issues. In the course they enhanced their knowledge on ‘Early Childhood’ and reporting skills on this particular topic. Back home, they aim to increase the quantity and quality of media coverage of issues affecting young children.

 

The course was an initiative of and financed by the Bernard van Leer Foundation. The foundation received over 300 applications on their call for participants. Only six of them were able to follow the course. They’ll be a fellow of the foundation for this year, 2010.

 

More information:  

 

* Contact RNTC: info@rntc.nl

* Bernard van Leer foundation

 

Watch the you tube video's with the stories of the participants:

 

 

Kanina Foss (South Africa)

Namita Kohli  (India)

Carmen Matos (Dominican Republic)

Nick Oluoch (Kenia)

Tatiana Velasquez (Colombia)

The sixth participant is Erick W Ndung from Kenya (no video)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interview with course participant Tatiana Velásquez

 

Empowering people is a dream goal for a journalist like the Colombian Tatiana Velásquez Archibold (26). Velásquez is enthusiastic about the course: “I learned more on combining journalistic and multimedia skills. The course will help me to create a website with useful tools. My idea is to involve journalism, blogging and childhood. Emphasized was the importance of interactivity, to get reactions back of the people I’d like to write for. Indeed, their responses can be very useful for me. Thus I can empower people to actually make a change. I do not only want to point out problems, I also want to find solutions, no matter how small they are.”

 

In Colombia Velásquez is a freelance journalist. She used to work for EL Heraldo, in Barranquilla. At that newspaper she used to write about education and thus about childrens issues. She was thus one of the very few in Colombia involved in this kind of writing. Velasquez: “Writing about children is considered as soft journalism. Most journalists choose economical or political issues.”

 

The need to write on childrens issues, is however obvious to Velásquez: “Children are vulnerable when it comes to security and health. They might suffer sexual abuse, or they are being recruited as child soldiers, or as drug traffickers in the slums. Many children in Colombia are (partly) being neglected. Especially the homeless children, but even children who grow up with loving parents sometimes lack the money for (quality) education, health insurance or even a balanced nutrition.”

Hardly ever children are being portrayed as individuals who may be taken seriously. So much more often they are seen as victims. Because Velásquez did better than that, she won the Pandi Child Friendly Journalism Award in 2007.