Keeping the youth moving

A youth participant calling his mother- image courtesy of YMM

During the June school holidays, Bush Radio was hard at work with a group of young people in Mitchells Plain from the Youth Media Movement (YMM).

Our former trainee news editor, Nadia Samie who just returned from the University of Southern Illinois in the United States where she completed her Masters in Professional Media and Media Management, conducted three intensive week long training sessions based at Glendale High School and at our studios in Salt River.

The YMM asked Bush Radio to provide media and radio training for the young people due to our experience of training young people in media skills through our Children’s Radio Education Workshop (CREW) project.

We feel that it is essential for all young people to be exposed to this kind of training as media surrounds everyone, shaping their views on issues and their understanding of world events, from TV to radio, and newspapers to using Facebook and Twitter.

This type of training is essential to show young people how to produce media, and it also equips them with the skills to understand and interpret the media messages bombarding them every day.

For most of the young people, this was their first interaction with media production and judging from their enthusiasm, it won’t be their last.

Besides discussing the power and influence of the media, part of the course also entailed making public service announcements (PSAs).

When the participants heard that the Programme Integrator gave approval for their PSAs to be played on air, students excitedly called their parents saying, “ek gaan op die radio wees, sit dit op 89.5fm”.