Refugee journalists and a healthy-eating cookie monster

Jemma:

Today (Tuesday) was the first full day of workshops. Caroline and I had our sessions planned out so that we could cover as many areas as possible.
It's a pretty packed programme but there are a few gems that I'm really looking forward to and I was excited to start with:

'Entrepreneurship and Journalism with Young Refugees'
Presenters Jan Vincens Steen, SteenMedia.no and Paal Stensaas, Markhi AS, of Norway, have bags of experience and expertise in media and entrepreneurism and they gave a great lecture about a news corporation set-up with young Somali's.

Headline facts:

- Hagadera News Corporation was set-up in the largest Somali refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya.
- This has helped young people use their freedom of speech and build their own business.
- Jan and Paal produced a manual for the young people to follow as a guide to writing news articles.
- They explained the importance of inviting the parents to find out about the opportunity particularly with young Muslim girls.
- It's also important to explain journalistic ethics around story ideas and investigations.
- The pair set-up a similiar programme in Norway and created a Writer's Visa which is a certifcate of the qualifications/skills the young people learn during the programme.

Jan and Paal were very interested in TMC's work and look forward to hearing from me in the future about working with refugee groups in the East Midlands.

This was a fantastic start to the workshops!

I went to the room where they were holding the 'Digital Tourist' workshop but it was more about showing you how to add/upload content to social networking sites etc with the aid of young people.

So, quite basic information which I already know about and so I chose to go to the 'Children, Media and Democracy' lecture instead followed by the 'Invisible Marketing Towards Children' lecture.

The second highlight of today was:

'Sesame Workshop: Building Healthy Habits for Life'
Presenter Patti Miller, Sesame Workshop, USA gave a great presentation on how the media is a powerful tool for education.

The bright presentation was a light relief from some of the dry lectures I'd been through that day.

Sesame Workshops deliver education to groups with the least access to educational tools and they aim to improve knowledge, attitudes and skills to deal with situations in society such as HIV, for example.

Since 2004, the workshops have been focusing on child obesity in the States and they had to re-invent one of the streets much loved characters - Cookie Monster.

This was one of the video clips Patti showed us during the presentation. It shows a news reporter interviewing the popular muppet who has learnt that cookies are a some times food rather than an all time food.

I'm intrigued to find out if the UK delivers any Sesame workshops and if so what social or community issues it might help to address.

'Promoting Online safety 'across Europe and beyond''
Presenter Janice Richardson, Insafe, European Schoolnet, Belguim, gave an interesting talk about the responsible use of the web rather than just the safety of it.

Janice spoke about the many opportunities of the web but also demonstrated the many challenges/risks that counter-balance them.

Opportunities
- global library on demand
- multi-media learning content
- creativity - user generated
- new socialization opportunities
- mobile - anywhere
- virtual worlds

Challenges/risks
- no accountability
- cut/paste - no learning. Zapping (which I think means copying)
- photo misuse, privacy
- discerning friends
- bullying
- location - risk
- violence

Caroline will update you with the many lectures and speeches she attended today shortly.

We spent the evening in the company of DK, from the Wales-based MediaSnackers, who'll be giving a talk on social media tomorrow (Wednesday).
And Patti Miller (as mentioned above).
Thanks for a great evening all. It was nice to discuss some of the issues we've touched on in the workshops in more detail.

Looking forward to social media workshop tomorrow along with delving into ethics of children's media and catching up with the Global Youth Council on their priorities.