After a great run, a whimper. That is how our newspaper’s summertime Journalism workshop for children ended this season.
But let us look at the sunny side. The one bright spot.
M. O. P. Vaishnav student Smurthy Mahesh, who promised to sign up with our newspaper for her internship this season, kept her word on May 2. Her first call - report on the condition of a playground near her home in Mandaveli. She was not even aware of it, leave alone know its location. Prodded on, she trudged on, located the space and threw up her hands.
“There are some puddles of water after the rain,” she called back.
“Talk to the youths there,” we advised her.
She stuck on.
And mailed back a little news story.
Her next assignment was to write on a newly-opened ‘Wellness Centre’ of the civic body, again close to her residence. She lost her way, despite using Google Maps. We did not let her off the hook. She was game.
She located the place but the doors were shut. “Ask around,” we told her. She did and drew a blank. “Go there tomorrow,” we told her. She went but the doors were shut. She was enterprising. She trudged around the San Thome zone and located a summer camp that was on and wrote on it.
“Now you are on your own,” we told her.
She took up the challenge. And wrote on the birds that have fun inside the Tholkappia Poonga every morning.
“Redo the story, you have got some facts wrong,” we advised her. She revised it and improved.
The last I heard from her was from San Thome again. Trying to pin down a coach at a football camp.
But six others, all from high school fell by the wayside. Days after we started the workshop. One gave up in 24 hours. Two others sought leave for personal functions. One who showed promise also faded. We called it a day, early. There was no time to waste, on both sides.
Cut to 2015. We rounded up that year’s Journalism course with a tough field assignment.
One group, a trio, set off to the seaside Nochikuppam zone, the one which has been in the news now - because of the Marina Loop Road case. Then, the families vacated from the run-down tenements had been forced to live in tin shacks on the swathe of sandy land and the civic conditions weren’t good at all.
The trio had to talk to the families, the kids there and report the situation. The young ones worked, gamely.
This week, the parent of one of trio, sent me a social media post of that assignment.
Children are laboured in our schools. A majority hardly have a feel of real-life, not even of their neighbourhoods. Parents to blame too.
Journalism teaches lots of skills for life.
If we can teach these to a few neighbourhood teens, through our newspaper, we have shared.
- Photo used here, courtesy Rajagopalan V., is of the trio at the 2015 workshop
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