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I’m trying to set up a citizen journalism project with these kids in Sierra Leone. With the help of Virginia at BBC World Class and Alex and Janette at Plan International.
This boy in the photo is talking about how the hospitals don’t have enough equipment.
I’m trying to find out about some things that effect the kids and help them with their ideas on what they could report on.
These kids seem quite lucky as at least they are in school – although they say they’re having trouble paying their school fees because their relatives abroad have stopped sending them money due to the worsening global economy.
Perhaps they might want to talk about Freetown’s street children, or about child workers, like these reports of kids who worked in the diamond mines , there are also problems of child trafficking, the terrible health problems contributing to high child mortality rates , not to mention child soldiers.
Plenty of issues effecting kids in Sierra leone, it would be a great to finally get kids themselves telling their own stories. I hope that we can get this one off the ground. If you can help with contacts or advice, get in touch. I’d like to add a thanks to Florian who added his photo of a boy from Sierra Leone to the Your Story Flickr group.
I – (that’s me, Nina Robinson) have asked two very knowledgable people to give their assessment of Barack Obama, 100 days into his presidency.
Joe Maggioncalde has worked at GM in Detroit nearly all his working life. He’s been a regular contributor to Your Story - see some of his work here.
Joe writes …
This is one of those “milestones” the media uses to kill time and trees.
But what really has been accomplished?
Here in Detroit, the situation continues to decay quickly and daily.
Now GM has basically closed the doors till mid-July.
Here in Detroit we’ve seen nothing. Nothing. If Obama can somehow stimulate the rest of the country to the point where they feel capable of buying cars, then they’ll probably build a statue of him, chisel down his nose and wash him with a hose.
Although we sang his name
we all went hungry just the same
Read Joe’s full post on his blog.
Cynthia Harrison’s husband Al, works at Chrysler in Detroit. Here’s her assessment, 100 days in.
Cynthia and husband, Al
Cynthia writes ..
We certainly got change, just not the sort we expected.
As a part-time college teacher, I expected to be working less after 20 years on the job, not more. But like many wives of auto workers, I have added hours where I can, to make up for the smaller paychecks my husband Al now receives.
Our factories no longer bustle with activity, and our dealerships are deserted, but our auto plants are open most days. Al, who has been an employee at Dodge Truck for 35 years, has worked 30 of the last 100 days. He’s been laid off a good part of Obama’s presidency, but he still believes the right man won the office.
“Obama’s personal involvement has helped Chrysler stay viable as a company so far,” Al says. “If McCain had won, he would have let us hit the wall.”
So while times are tough, they could be worse. It’s almost certain that they will become worse. But we have Obama to thank for the reprieve, and if we can trust him to guide us through this streamlining of the auto industry, we can trust him to stay behind us if and when the bankruptcies begin.
Every week, as new waves of lay-offs occur, we wives of auto workers hold our collective breath. In my book group, there are three auto wives. One has already seen her husband forced into early retirement.
Obama seems to be everywhere at once. He’s in Europe and Mexico and in the Oval Office, but he is also in Detroit, working with our governor and with the auto companies. He cares about us, and we know it. And that is some comfort in these distressing times.
How do you think Obama is doing 100 days in? Add your comments below.
Hi I am watching some of the livestream by the G20 bloggers , you can watch it here.
Also some of the highlights are on the G20Voice page.
The BBC has had a number of people sending in their photos and video footage – you can see them here and here .
I went to go and meet the 50 bloggers who have been brought to London to cover the G20 summit by Oxfam. See the last blog post about who they are and where they’re from.
Cheryl Contee who worked with Your Story for Obama’s Inauguration, has been writing about arriving in London here.
She writes..
I walked the wrong way to the hotel and saw the entrance to G20 ground zero – the ExCel Centre.
There are a lot of cops around dressed in bright yellow plastic vests and funny shaped round black hats, but they are all very nice and quite helpful. Though like Obama’s inauguration, they are perhaps not as well trained as they might be given the circumstances. One cop whom I asked for directions shrugged his shoulders and good-naturedly exclaimed: “I have no idea. They brought me in from Bristol!” Right…
The bloggers have been meeting up today and talking about the things they care about. I also went along and spoke to the Saudi Jeans guy, Jessica from Mexico – vivrmexico.com, Daudi Were from Kenya, his blog is mentalacrobatics.com and Michael Kleinham from humanitarianrelief.change.org.
I’ve recorded some of their thoughts on what they think the G20 should be talking about and that piece is going to be broadcast on the World Today programme tonight.
Brentside High School, London
The BBC is handing the airwaves over to school children today. They are setting the news agenda across some TV and radio programmes, including for tonight’s World Have Your Say.
We will be linking up kids from London, Johannesburg, Nairobi and the US . Brentside High School kids came up with questions for discussion like,
Does sex education encourage teenage sex?
Is the portrayal of teenagers in the media fair?
Should children follow their own dreams or live their parents’ dreams?
Your Story is getting reports from young people around the world.
Mayra Avellar Neves was 15 years old when she organised a protest in a Rio de Janeiro favela. She organised a 300 children strong peace march – to get police out of the favela during school hours.
Now Mayra is 17 and fights for childrens’ rights. She got the Childrens Peace Prize from Desmond Tutu last year.
She’s recording a piece right now for Your Story, talking to local children about their lives.
There must be many brave kids out there who are, against the odds, trying to make the world a better place. Hopefully I can get some of these kids the recognition they deserve by getting their stories out there, and who better to tell those stories than the kids themselves. If you know any good stories like this, get in touch!
G20 Finance Ministers Mar 09 - Photo by Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images
I’ve been here at BBC World Service News, on the 3rd floor of Bush House, for about four years now.
During this time, high profile meetings involving heads of state and finance ministers – like the G20 summit - come around every year. Learn more about what the G20 heads of state will be talking about this week, here.
Most of the time these meetings are covered in a very straightforward and dare I say it, sometimes dull fashion. Analytical interviews with experts and ministers, although an important part of our coverage, can sometimes be an arduous listen. They are after all a collection of grey suits in a room (see photo).
So I was very pleased to hear that there will be an injection of colour this time round.
Blogger, Cheryl Contee just emailed me. Cheryl worked with Your Story as part of our Obama Inauguration coverage. She blogs at jackandjillpolitics.com – she’s an African-American woman, tech-savvy, smart and engaging.
She told me about G20voice.org. Oxfam are inviting 50 influential bloggers, to the G20 summit happening here in London this week and Cheryl is one of the bloggers they picked.
The G20voice.org website reads …
The UK Government recognises the growing importance of bloggers debating the issues around the G20 Summit and have allocated space and passes within the Summit venue.
The list of bloggers, will include 15 from the developing world, some focused on poverty, others on climate change. All are pretty high profile and eclectic people. You can see the selected bloggers and their latest posts here.
I think there’s potential to do something exciting here in how citizen journalism can add to our coverage of this G20 summit. I’ll keep you updated on this blog with what we plan to do.
Photo by Andy Ciordia
My friend used to work as a madam in a place that had “high class” call girls offering sex at a premium price. I know all kinds of people!
It operated out of a gleaming high rise glass building in an area of London called the Docklands, where many rich city workers live.
She used to tell me stories about the pop stars and sporting personalities who used to turn up, the champagne they offered at the door and the money being made by the beautiful women who worked there.
A luxury suite in a New Zealand brothel
It’s a similar picture to what New Zealand women are saying has happened to prostitution over there. That it’s attracting a better class of clientele now, which they put down to the fact that their profession has been decriminalised.
But that’s hardly the norm is it?
The reality for most prostitutes is not a luxury suite but the cold hard streets. As this report from South Africa details - women working in the sex trade suffer drug problems, and fear violence and disease. This, for me, is where the real story is and I’m looking for a citizen journo who has personal experience of this life, to report it.
I had a quick look around myself and found Debbie Toughey in Durban, Kathleen Mitchell in Ohio, Anju Pawar who is a social worker with the ASHA project in Mumbai and Somaly Mam in Cambodia.
If you want to suggest someone, you can contact me by adding your comment to this post.
When I was growing up in Birmingham in the UK, we used to watch this TV magazine programme, aimed especially for the South Asian community, called Eastern Eye. We used to record it on our video.
One of the recorded programmes had a dance and musical group called the bangla crew, hence the title of this post.
We actually learned all the dance moves as kids. Did you ever do stupid stuff like that?
Anyway, I am working with Abhinav who is in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka on a documentary he is making with young people about poverty.
It sounds really interesting – this is what Sudipta – who is also working on the recording – said to me via email ..
The documentary will be from the our point of view, that is from the point of view of teenagers.
Specifically, what we hope to show in our documentary will be the “gap” between the rich and poor in the city, the difference between the privileged schools and underprivileged schools, the difference in health care available, the roles that local and international organizations are playing to tackle the issue of poverty in Bangladesh and also their shortcomings.
We will be showing the personal stories of children from privileged and underprivileged schools along with the personal stories of people like rickshaw pullers who lead a terrible life.
Sudipta says that they will send me a sample video and some photos which I will post here when I get them. I need a sample recording to check whether the sound and video quality will be good enough for us to broadcast.
I think poverty is more damaging when you can see the rich and what they have. Maybe it’s worse to be poor in Britain than it is in Africa?
We did something like this before – take a look at what we did and here are the photos to go with those stories. Photos on poverty in the UK, and on poverty in Jamaica.
I’m interested in doing a documentary in the deprived neighbourhoods of Chicago at some point. I am working with these teenagers to get something off the ground, but it’s been a month since I asked them to do a recording for me and I haven’t heard anything from them, despite my emails and calls – which is abit worrying.
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