Reunion of Young Peace Journalists 2019/20

Reunion of Young Peace Journalists was recently concluded with the participation of MediaCorps Fellows belonging to four Fellowship batches. The reunion took place from October 2-4 at Global Towers, Colombo. 90 young journalists out of 103 (Male: 47, Female: 43 and Sinhala: 44 Tamil: 34 Muslim: 12) under grant #2 of the Fellowship attended this special event after one year.

The Reunion commenced on Day 1 with a brief welcome ceremony with the participation of Ms. Jean Mackenzie, Chief of Party of IREX and Mr. Mohamed Azad, Program Director of SDJF. Ms. Jean congratulated the Fellows for successfully completing the Fellowship and reminded that the spirit of MediaCorps doesn’t end after this event but it will continue in time to come. “What you have started doesn’t end here, you will continue to create stories that influence and shape the society and advocate for its burning issues and Sri Lanka’s efforts for peace and coexistence”. Mr. Mohamed Azad also added “We have created a new platform called MediaCorps Watch as a sustainability initiative to enable you to create more stories and thereby create a lasting impact”. On behalf of the MediaCorps Watch Program, Ms. Nirasha Piyawadani, MediaCorps Fellow and Program Officer for CMIL also spoke to the Fellows and invited them to send stories for the MediaCorps Watch News Magazine Program.

On Day 2 of the Reunion a special social networking session was arranged for the MediaCorps Fellows of all four batches to interact and mingle with each other.

During the sessions that followed, MediaCorps Fellows took several self-assessment exercises to evaluate their personal and professional changes that were a result of the MediaCorps Fellowship program. A special questionnaire was used in this regard called the Most Significant Change Analysis Tool (MSCAT) which guided the Fellows to identify the most significant change that happened in their life after attending the MediaCorps Fellowship Program.  Fellows after a self-assessment as well as an experience sharing in groups identified their most significant success stories. They related inspirational stories on how they started charity projects to help the underprivileged communities of their host communities, conducted MoJo training sessions in their communities and workplaces and initiated movements to counter malpractices in social media such as the spread of fake news and gender-based discrimination.

The following day, assisted by their MoJo story mentors, they also produced an individual MoJo story on their significant success stories reflecting the MediaCorps experience, the change and how they created an impact on the society through their experience.

At the end of the Reunion each Fellow was awarded with a valuable certificate in recognition of the successful completion of the MediaCorps Fellowship Program.

MediaCorps Fellowship is designed by the Sri Lanka Development Journalist Forum in partnership with the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) and the support of USAID as a part of the Media Empowerment for a Democratic Sri Lanka (MEND) Program. Under the Second Intake of the MediaCorps Fellowship, SDJF trained 103 young journalists who have produced over 200 appealing stories. For more information visit www.Ldjf.org.