EOTO: Young Creatives, for Young Creatives

One of EOTO’s (the charity set up by Plan B)  ideas is that young people should teach other young people. It makes sense.

Very pleased to still be considered a ‘young person’, I was happy to get involved with the EOTO Media training programme. Here’s the idea:

EOTO Media offers young people a series of FREE media training workshops led by young industry professionals, who help them to identify and develop their talent through exciting and innovative projects. The content created is then published on their personal EOTO Media profile, giving members the platform to showcase their talent to the world.

Workshops are currently offered in Photography, Video Production and Journalism.

 For the past 6 weeks, I’ve been doing some journalism workshops with young people who were interested in the industry but lacked the experience and confidence to break into it. After a short course, spread over 6 weekends, my students had each researched, reported on and self-produced a brand new story on a local issue that mattered to them and their community. See their work here:

http://eototrust.org/journalism/

The exciting thing is that their work doesn’t stop here. They now have a platform to create and showcase their work via the EOTO website. An online showreel / CV for potential employers to look at and a way to let the world know what young people really care about.

Disaffected youth, and what do we do with them?

It’s a good question.

It’s a question that every single modern day political party has asked themselves about, challenged their opponents on and found it difficult, if not impossible, to find a sensible answer to.

It is not anymore, since the 2011 London riots, a question that can be ignored.

And that’s Ben Drew’s point. He’s the man, who we all know as world famous rapper and artist Plan B, trying to change things. Trying to fill the void that the big question mark currently occupies. And trying to make sure those riots do not happen again because young people will no longer feel that same sense of helplessness and abandonment that caused them to riot in the first place.

But going back to the actual question (see above). Ben would argue that it’s not what we do WITH young people, it’s about what we can do FOR them. And what he’s done is set up a groundbreaking new charity – Each One Teach One -to help young people help themselves.

Growing up in East London and experiencing violence, crime, bullying and a huge struggle with the mainstream education system, Ben found himself in a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) feeling very ‘disaffected’. It was his tutors at this PRU who gave him a glimmer of self belief and sparked his ambition to do something with his life through his passion, music.

It’s this idea of self belief that he is pumping into EOTO and so far the results are nothing short of inspirational. EOTO has provided funding for projects that give young people the skills and encouragement they need to follow a passion and a career path.  Take the Hair Project in Hackney, a training facility for young people to learn on the job and cut real hair from day one. They learn from young industry professionals about how to become industry professionals and by the time they leave, most of them have jobs in the industry…better jobs than their tutors have ever had.

The brand new website that has just launched only highlights what can happen when people come together and share their skills and experiences with young people. The ethos is as simple as this:

EOTO is the University of Alternative Learning

It is not a physical place, but a new way of thinking.

It is an innovative movement of dedicated groups of people who will help us to create

opportunities and enable positive, long-term changes in the lives of young people.

We work with inspiring individuals to give young people new skills to increase their

confidence and improve their chances in life. We provide a fresh approach to addressing

these problems and believe in the potential of every young person.

As the previous dateline suggests, it’s not too often that I gather up the gusto to write on this blog. But then, it’s not too often that a day like today happens, so I feel that a short post is more than appropriate.

The news that my friends and former colleagues from NBC News had escaped, physically unharmed,  from their captors in Syria was quite literally the best I’ve ever heard. The guys bravely held it together for this emotional onscreen account, I hope they’re getting some well deserved R&R now – NBC team freed from captors in Syria

In Turkey: Ghazi Balkiz, Richard Engel, John Kooistra

Days like today  also make me think of journalists who are still in captivity. For example Austin Tice, a journalist who’s been missing in Syria for more than 4 months now. His family’s anguish must be unimaginable, they’ve set up a page which you can link to here: a http://www.austinticefamily.com/

The HEAT was on!

To say the last 2 days have been intense is an understatement. Out in the wilderness dodging incoming fire and land mines, negotiating with hostile militia and dressing catastrophic bleeds are just some of the things that me and a group of other journalists have been doing. This was not in Afghanistan or Syria though, this was all part of a Hostile Environment Awareness Training Course – or as they’re known in the industry, a HEAT course.

The course, run by Pilgrims Security, put me and my fellow course mates from NBC, CBS, ABC and various other organizations well and truly through our paces. The point of it is to teach you skills that could save yours and other people’s lives in difficult and hostile environments and to ‘hardwire’ that information to your brain so that reacting in an emergency situation becomes second nature. 

I hope that the scenarios we simulated and trained for on the course will never become reality. But if they ever do, at least I will feel ready to react in a way that I know could potentially get myself and others out of danger and prevent injury or worse still, death.

Many of my fellow course mates were seasoned field correspondents, producers, camera and technical crew used to war zones and areas of great hostility. It was great to work alongside them and hear their stories and experiences. 

After a tough day’s training it was time to unwind at the bar (naturally). And despite the seriousness of what we were really there for, some funny tales of experiences in conflict zones soon became talking points. 

My favourite story has to be one from my colleague Julian Prictoe, an NBC engineer who found himself in a very ‘unusual’ kidnap situation on his first Afghanistan assignment shortly after 9/11.

If you have 5 mins, and fancy a giggle, I strongly recommend you read Julian’s blog post here:

Link: Afghan warlords need help with cable too

 

Uganda: Kony’s atrocities are not the only ones

Everyone has their opinion about the craze that is the Kony 2012 campaign. For what it’s worth, I happen to think it’s achieved its ultimate goal in raising awareness – and probably a lot of money. The film itself is undeniably powerful, whether it makes you cry or cringe, it touches the emotions and it gets you thinking and talking.

I’m not going to go into the issues surrounding the charity, Invisible Children, and how much money they may or may not have, and whether they’re spending it in the right or wrong way. That’s a separate post for another time.

In the end,  2 weeks ago Kony & his LRA were largely unheard of,  now you’re hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t linked to something Kony related on their facebook page.

I hope that the Kony 2012 campaign followers will not be blinkered and will notice the other atrocities against children taking place in the region too. My documentary on child sacrifice in Uganda highlights a major one. In fact, the country’s Chief of Justice at the time told me that the issue is worse than the actions of Kony and his LRA.

My film is from 2009, but the sacrificial killing of children for financial gain still goes on.

I’m glad that some firm action is being taken to stop the LRA. I’m sad it has taken so long. I sincerely hope I won’t still be writing about child sacrifice in Uganda in  25 years time.

Costa cruises: you couldn’t make it up…

Seeing pictures of the half submerged Costa Concordia cruiseliner on my tv screen was pretty unbelievable. Seeing it up close as my ferry approached Giglio  island, off the coast of Tuscany,  was completely surreal. The sunken ship quite literally looked like something straight from a Hollywood movie set. The hundreds of tourists flocking to the little Italian island to catch a glimpse and a photograph clearly thought the same too…

The stricken Costa Concordia, Giglio Island

So, on first hearing this week that ANOTHER Costa cruise liner had run into trouble,  we in the newsroom had to look around and check that some kind of practical joke wasn’t being played! Sure enough though, a fire in the engine room of the Costa Allegra (the Concordia’s sister ship) left 1000 people floating off the coast of Africa with no power or hot food for 3 days.

As the live pictures came in this morning of the weary Costa Allegra passengers disembarking their nightmarish ocean liner, I must admit I didn’t feel too bad for them because, despite their ordeal, they were now getting some R&R in the Seychelles!  I couldn’t help but think though, about the families of those who hadn’t been so lucky in Italy and who were probably watching this too, what must their feelings be towards the cruise operaters, given that an error has happened again?

Costa Allegra passengers back on dry land after 3 days floating at sea with no power

Saturday marks the start of the Costa Concordia hearings in Grosetto, Italy. There’ll be no Captain Schettino and we’re told now, no black box data evidence. But I’ll be watching it closely and with interest. As, I am sure, will the thousands of passengers and crew who were on board. All of whom, incidentally, have been invited to attend the hearings which will take place the town’s theatre – because the court house is not big enough.

The drama lives on.

 

A few pics from my Giglio trip. Still working on the Seychelles….

Costa Concordia coverage for NBC, Giglio island

The ‘Journalism Talk’ with 10 year olds!

So there I was, mooching around the local supermarket near my parents house, when I hear a little voice say ‘Hi Nina, how’s your career going?’. It was Harry, a young boy from Yeo Moor school in Clevedon, where my mum works. I was touched that he’d remembered me from a few weeks ago when I’d gone into the year 6 class to do a ‘talk on journalism’.

I’m not going to lie, in the first instance, I was a little annoyed that my dear mother had so eagerly ‘volunteered’ me to do this. After all, I’m still trying to find my own way around this crazy world of journalism, let alone explain it to a roomfull of influential children. Annoyance soon turned to nervousness when I had forty pairs of 10 year old eyes looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to tell them all about my ‘exciting’ job in television! And when the teacher said I was there to talk to them about how to write a good newspaper article – I nearly fled the classroom! Print Journalist, I am not. And Print Journalist in a position to tell others how to write for print, I am most certainly not!

What actually happened though, surprised and refreshed me! We went through the 5 W’s of journalism, talked about how reports should always be accurate, reliable and unopinionated  (had to bite my tongue a little there) and talked about story structure. By the time we got to making up headlines, the kids were flying! The classroom was beginning to sound more like a Fleet street news room.

Luckily no-one asked me about phone hacking.

By the end of the morning we’d set up a small news production operation, complete with researchers, sub-editors, typists and interviewers. Our teacher (or news editor) gave us a one hour deadline to write a whole newspaper article about the destruction of Amazonian rain forests… it was a tight deadline but we pulled through and went to print on time! Phew.

What was refreshing was how engaged the children were. They had so much fun with the exercises we made up, got really creative with words and asked some great questions about the industry. It was a real buzz to see them getting excited about journalism and made me realise why I’d got into all of this in the first place.

Talking to Yeo Moor Year 6 took me out of my comfort zone that day, but I enjoyed every minute. It was a real pleasure to work with such young enthusiasts and I’m pretty sure I spotted some budding reporters in that classroom. I hope to see some familiar bylines in newspapers to come! (parents… apologies in advance!)

A Year of Journalism & Conflict: finally taking it in

Everything about this post is retrospective but I just  had to acknowledge a great exhibition that I recently went to at Somerset House, London.  Frontline: A Year of Journalism and Conflict, put together by Sky News,  looked back at the crazy year that was 2011 by showcasing the major stories that had us gripped. It started with Cairo and the Arab uprising and then, using photos, video and some extremely clever interactive multimedia, took you on a journey  through Syria (which was particularly poignant given the current situation there), Libya and finished up on the London riots of summer 2011.

It was spine-tinglingly good. I realised that, although I had seen all of the pictures and footage that were on display, I had not actually ‘seen’ them.  I’d worked on our Foreign Assignment desk through every one of those conflicts, had friends and colleagues out in the field on every single one and probably looked at hundreds of hours worth of footage / pages of editorial BUT until now I’d not taken a step back and really processed it all.

For me it bought back memories of living/working through some of the incredible events of last year. I saw again the unbelievable images of Egyptian security forces charging at crowds on camel-back. The jubilation in Tahrir Square on the night that Mubarak stepped down.  I remembered the night that Tripoli fell and the moment our team called to say they’d just reached Green Square, their comms were terrible and all I could hear was celebratory gunshots being fired in the air – how we made air that night is still a mystery to me! I was transported back to my night shift when the jaw-dropping image of a burning red double-decker bus appeared on my screen, who could have imagined the chaotic days that followed as London erupted into riots?

If, at the start of 2011, someone had told me that half of these things would happen over the next 12 months, I think i would have (politely) laughed in their face. But they did happen – some are still happening –  and I’m glad I got to stand back and take them all in on a personal level.

Unfortunately the exhibition is over now. But if you’re interested I’d strongly recommend just ‘youtubing’ a few reports as a reminder.

Here are a few I’ll always remember…

Stumbled across this short film put together by cameramen Daniel Demoustier & Sean Swann (ITN)… shows those dramatic scenes when  camels stormed protestors in Tahrir square.

NBC’s Richard Engel reports from Tahrir Square on the night Mubarak stepped down. 

Sky’s Alex Crawford enters Tripoli with the Rebels

NBC’s Richard Engel on the day Rebels took Gaddafi’s compound

Sky’s Mark Stone in Clapham, South London on the night of violence and looting

A stark reminder

I haven’t written on here for far too long, but seeing a report on the BBC last night acted as a stark reminder that Uganda is still struggling with the horrendous practise of child sacrifice. Struggling, that is, to do anything about it. The short report gave an insight into how the problem, that raised its ugly head around 3 years ago, is looking now. It’s doesn’t make for easy viewing. I am torn between feeling extremely glad that this is being highlighted in the western media again and feeling deeply saddened that there seems to have been such a lack of progression in the country since I produced a documentary on this exact subject 2 and a half years ago. Watch BBC report by Chris Rogers

If you have read any of this blog you’ll know that I covered this issue in 2009,  I then went back a year later and screened my documentary to a large and influential audience.  The Chief of the Ugandan police force was there, so was the head of the ‘human sacrifice task force’ (a body set up especially to deal with the influx of sacrificial killings). They were very receptive and positive, and  I must admit that their fighting talk was impressive. But, as with any government, actions speak a lot louder than words. The latest figures from the  Jubilee Campaign report  says that over 900 children have fallen victim to sacrifice in the country, so the question has to be asked – exactly what kind of action is being taken here and with what kind of force?

Without going back to Uganda myself, it is difficult to pass judgement on whether there really has been any progress in tackling this horrible crime or not. Certainly this latest BBC report, my contacts on the ground in Uganda and my gut feeling, suggest that there has not.

Thank you BJTC…

 

http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/539629.php

http://www.falmouth.ac.uk/515/news-from-university-college-falmouth-5/press-releases-47/ucfs-international-journalists-take-first-and-second-in-top-industry-awards-3332.html