The Public Media Alliance annual travel bursary programme enables staff from broadcast networks and partner NGOs to go on exchange, an event or training in another country for up to two weeks – sharing knowledge between national broadcasters across the world, and bringing back experience and fresh ideas to their organisation. This year’s intake includes technical professionals, journalists exploring social issues and producers looking to increase cultural diversity in their output.
2015 bursars
Hassan Ahmed Usman, FRCN Nigeria > KBC Kenya
Odette Campbell, GBN Grenada > Radiodays Europe in Italy
Nadine Mcleod, TV Jamaica > NBC St Vincent and the Grenadines
& Sanjita Kauchar, Radio Bikrampur Bangladesh; and Keerthi Bandara Mahagedara from Sarvodaya Sri Lanka > the PMA gender workshop in India
Bouchra Ouatik, CBC Radio-Canada > CRTV Cameroon
Sohaila Kapur Charnalia, Lok Sabha India > ABC and SBS Australia
Mathew Ezekiel, TBC Tanzania > RBA Rwanda
Kelly-Ann Turnbull, GBC Gibraltar > BBC Scotland
Tshilidzi Davhana, SABC South Africa > CBC Radio-Canada
Hassan Ahmed Usman
An engineer from the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Hassan visited KBC Kenya in April, just two months after Kenya switched over to digital TV transmission. During his 10-day visit, he saw production units in Nairobi and transmission stations in Limuru, Ngong and Langata and noted the high level of digital signal coverage – 80 per cent. He was also impressed by the level of public awareness of the transition. Hassan was able to talk about and compare the two broadcasters’ networks with counterparts at KBC – Nigeria’s is a star mesh network, whereas KBC’s is largely centralised in Nairobi. He said the Kenyans were interested in the reach of the Nigerian radio network.
“I am very amazed with high level of interest in Nigeria movies and music shown by Kenya citizens,” reported Hassan, and he believes there is potential for the two countries to partner on technical expertise and content. To this end he is assisting his managers and the FRCN legal department on drawing up a memorandum of understanding. On his return, Hassan also organised a workshop for his FRCN colleagues, sharing his experience of Kenya’s digitisation model.
Odette Campbell
Odette is a content developer with Grenada’s national radio and TV network. She travelled to one of the world’s largest radio industry events, Radiodays Europe, this year held in Milan. “We are at a delicate stage of re-focusing our oldest radio station, Klassic FM,” said Odette, “and we are repositioning another station, Hott 98, and in the embryonic stage of developing a third.” She found the sessions on how to “kick new life” into broadcast shows and the use of social media to attract new market segments particularly enlightening and useful.
She also noted how young radio audiences were considered at Radiodays. “Some presenters made a case for the Facebook generation and another session called ‘Don’t leave the kids behind’ highlighted ways of getting young people keyed in to radio.” While in Milan, Odette shared her observations with her team in Grenada over WhatsApp. On her return she prepared briefing sessions and purchased the event on catchup so that her colleagues could watch the presentations. She said many of the ideas gleaned from the Radiodays sessions are now being implemented as GBN embarks on phase two of its content development and repositioning strategy.
Nadine McLeod
Nadine is a reporter and producer for Jamaica’s TVJ, who travelled to St Vincent in the Grenadines to gather information on the issue of domestic violence to form a broader Caribbean perspective. She interviewed victims of domestic abuse, a confessed reformed perpetrator, the police commissioner and representatives from NGOs that deal with the issue to give their perspective. Nadine was even able to interview the Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines. She is now putting together the material for a three-part TV feature on violence against women and girls and has produced reports on the topic for both her employer and the host station in St Vincent and the Grenadines, NBC.
Nadine plans to do follow up stories, particularly given the coming of an election St Vincent and the Grenadines as early as this year. She said: “Traveling to St Vincent and the Grenadines to investigate the issue provided me with a much better insight into domestic violence overall and how a Caribbean country grapples with the issue and finds solutions. She wants to help the people she met in St Vincent and Grenadines as well as people working on the issue in Jamaica.
Sanjita Kauchar
Sanjita is a producer for a community radio station in Bangladesh. She used the bursary to participate in the PMA gender workshop in India. She gained understanding of broadcasters from different countries, as well as representing Bangladesh’s community radio sector. “The workshop helped me to have a clear idea of how to deal with gender-sensitive issues and portray them positively on radio,” she said. After the trip Sanjita spoke with her colleagues about gender issues and portrayal in Radio Bikrampur’s programmes. On International Women’s Day she presented a programme featuring a local female member of the district council to discuss the problems faced by women in their community.
Sanjita, who had never been outside Bangladesh before, said she was the only participant from community radio and she felt proud to represent the community media sector in an international forum. Sanjit said she hopes the experience will help bridge cultural differences, create links and promote harmony between broadcasters in South Asia in the future. With her colleagues and other community radio practitioners in Bangladesh, Sanjita plans to take the initiative to revisit her station’s broadcasting content and add more social value so that they can better serve information-poor communities.
Keerthi Bandara Mahagedara
Keerthi is a district coordinator for Sarvodaya, a community development NGO in Sri Lanka. Like Sanjita, he also used the bursary to attend the workshop in India. Sarvodaya engages in vital campaigns aimed at women such as promoting breastfeeding, HIV/Aids prevention and ending violence against women. Keerthi said: “The opportunity to be involved in this workshop gave me valuable skills that I can use to work with the media to make the campaigns I do more powerful, and reach out to more people.”
The workshop also provided Keerthi with the opportunity to compare notes with other NGOs working in similar areas, as well as meet journalists and learn what information they required. Keerthi observed that many of the projects and ways of reaching out to audiences on stories around gender could be implemented in quite a few of his field programmes. He continued: “I met some wonderful people who showed much passion about gender issues, and it was good to meet my colleagues from Bangladesh and India who have very similar issues to us. We as an organisation devote a lot of our concern to gender participation, since it is far behind the marginal line in my country.”
Bouchra Ouatik
Bouchra is a reporter for the French language channel of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She visited Cameroon’s public broadcaster, CRTV (pictured at the start of this story). Her parents are Moroccan, so she was keen to engage with her African heritage and the continent's news agendas, but also understand and learn about another French/English bilingual public broadcaster. Bouchra said it was very insightful to compare and contrast the way the two broadcasters worked. “Canada has a population of about 80 per cent English and 20 per cent French-speakers – in Cameroon, it’s the opposite,” she observed. CRTV’s language output was integrated into one channel rather than two distinct ones as in Canada, and more resources and information were shared.
During her stay, the presence of Boko Haram in the country was a big story, and she produced packages on this for both broadcasters. She shadowed local reporters and received first-hand feedback on her reporting. She also filed a story on the popularity of Chinese language-learning in Cameroon. She did a presentation for CRTV staff on how she used smartphones and social networks to enhance reporting in Canada and the requirement to create stories to works across all platforms.
Sohaila Kapur Charnalia
Sohaila is a senior anchor for India’s parliamentary channel, Lok Sabha. She produces and presents a programme called The State of Culture. She spent time with the team making the Drum, a popular live current affairs show at the ABC. At SBS, Sohaila’s was particularly interested in how indigenous culture in Australia was covered. She learned about NITV, the multicultural broadcaster’s dedicated division, and its programmes such as Living Black, coverage of indigenous participation in sports, children’s shows, and documentaries on community issues. The Australian staff were keen to know more about Lok Sabha, and Sohaila said they were amazed that a parliamentary channel could broadcast 24 hours a day. There was also interest in exchanging content – and as a result of her visit, NITV has released a show on Aboriginal culture to air on Lok Sabha.
Sohaila said she was inspired by the collaborative working witnessed in Australia. “In our case, it is the editorial head who decides the topic and the team is expected to follow,” she said. She has proposed more brainstorming sessions between the editor and the team at Lok Sabha, and believes it will lead to better quality shows.
Mathew Ezekiel
A documentary film producer with the Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation, Mathew aimed to exchange skills with counterparts in Rwanda on the production of human interest stories. He was invited to work with the Rwanda Broadcasting Authority’s TV and radio production teams on various educational TV programmes. At the time of his visit, the RBA was preparing to inaugurate a new building fitted with state-of-the-art broadcasting technology. Mathew said that TBC had the same technology and he was pleased to be able to help share his technical knowledge to assist with its use.
He observed that a lot of the RBA workforce comprised “young, informative people” reporting on health, unemployment, culture, development and IT. And they had many questions for him; on pre-production, production, editing and the programme delivery progress. “I feel my presence at least gave them a new perspective,” Mathew said. On the other hand, he was able to share with his managers on his return how broadcasters in Rwanda were using Facebook, Twitter and blogs. He intends to use social networking websites as part of the programmes he produces and eventually devise a way to do this for the whole TV station.
Kelly-Anne Turnbull
Kelly-Anne is a broadcast journalist and presenter for GBC in Gibraltar, which she describes as extremely hardworking, and one which the island’s population of 30,000 feels very close to. She was keen to gain more experience at a much larger broadcaster, and visited BBC Scotland. In two weeks, she worked with eight different departments and went out on location numerous times, and she said she met many new and interesting people, all of whom were interested in Gibraltar and in particular, GBC and how they operate.
Her trip coincided with the UK General Election, and she was able to absorb working methods put into place at the BBC leading up to the election, which she can apply to Gibraltar’s election – which is around the corner. On her return, she met her CEO who said he was happy with her the skills she had gained on her placement such as improving her voicing technique and pace. Kelly-Anne said: “I’m also bursting with ideas for other departments and plan to share these with the heads of TV and radio at GBC.” She said she made especially strong links with BBC Music, who are keen to keep in touch and they’ll possibly be covering some of Gibraltar’s upcoming concerts and festivals.
Tshilidzi Davhana
A commissioning editor at South Africa’s SABC, and former teacher, Tshilidzi has a specific interest in educational content, and wanted to see how another broadcaster makes educational content competitive and educational at the same time. Broadcasting in a country with 11 official languages, she was also keen to compare the approach of Canada’s public broadcaster, which broadcasts in two national and eight Aboriginal languages. She also visited a local PSB, TV Ontario.
Tshilidzi said that Canada is known for having a long tradition of producing popular and award-winning audovisual programming for children and young people. She visited the sets of two children’s TV programmes, met the executive producer of TVO and visited Sinking Ships, a production company that creates mathematics shows for TVO. Her key learnings from the visit included the value of: cross-promotion of programmes across different platforms, developing apps and games to support TV content, encouraging young people to write in and share their thoughts of a show, and outreach activities to extend TV content by taking programmes to the people. On her return, Tshilidzi introduced the Digital Manager at SABC to Sinking Ships Productions to learn more about on-air apps and games. The visit sparked ideas around using mascots at events to promote programmes outside broadcasting and the use of developmental psychologists when devising educational and children’s content.
