By Jacqueline Grima
A new community project entitled ‘Somali Voices’ will be coming to Manchester soon to help raise the profile of the city’s Somali community. The project, launched by Media Trust and Open Society Foundations, has been designed to help the Somali community learn new skills and to give them a voice in the media.
‘Somali Voices’ is a free scheme that offers leading figures of the Somali community the chance to learn journalism and media skills, enabling them to find new ways of highlighting issues that are important to them. Training courses on offer include social media skills and media interview skills. The project also offers numerous opportunities for participants to network with media professionals and some may also be offered one-to-mentoring. After training, members of the Somali community will then be able to use their new skills to raise awareness of the social and political issues they face such as poverty and radicalisation as well as difficulties with education and employment.
The scheme is also supported by Manchester Metropolitan University’s (Manchester Met) Department of Journalism, Information and Communications, who last year helped launch the Manchester Somali community’s first bi-lingual newspaper, SASCA News. Journalism lecturer, Dave Porter, told us, “Somali Voices is a great opportunity for those members of the community who may not get a voice to be mentored and trained in vital media skills. We at the journalism department of Manchester Met have been asked to become a partner to the Media Trust project as a direct result of the work we did setting up the Somali bi-lingual newspaper in south Manchester.”
He added, “Manchester Met journalism tutors will be hosting Media Trust workshops for Somali Voices over the next few weeks and I’d urge anyone interested to get involved.”
Applicants to the scheme must be 18 plus and fluent in English. The closing date for applications is midnight on the 8th February 2016.
For more information, see the Media Trust website or email safiaa@mediatrust.org
Alternatively, email Dave Porter at D.Porter@mmu.ac.uk
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