Eight hours west of Lusaka in the rural town of Mongu, Zambia, about 2 500 children come together to watch World Cup soccer on huge screens while being intermittently interviewed by local student reporters.
Further north on the continent, in Gisenyi, Rwanda, young reporters put on “radio shows” — during half-time in a field set up with TV screens — to discuss the merits of a good education.
This all forms part of the “World Cup in My Village” programme, which brings youths together to not only enjoy the World Cup — a luxury to most in these impoverished areas — but more importantly to address pressing issues in their communities.
The young people of Gisenyi and Mongu face poverty, unemployment and a lack of sufficient health and educational programmes. With the help of Unicef, organisations such as the Children’s Radio Foundation and local organisations like Vision Jeunesse Nouvelle in Rwanda, children are trained as multimedia journalists and set out to produce stories on issues that directly affect them.
Michal Rahfaldt, director of the Children’s Radio Foundation’s programme in Mongu, says the children are thriving.
“They sort of live vicariously through the stories from the big cities, and they are keenly aware of it,” says Rahfaldt. “This is a chance to bring their stories out from the rural areas.”
The issues brought to the fore in Zambia include education, gender equality and climate change. This past April, the Zambian government and Unicef hosted the country’s first Children’s Climate Conference, in Lusaka. Several of the children who served as local ambassadors to the conference are from Mongu and used their multimedia training to produce radio and video pieces to educate their peers on local environmental problems.
‘It’s about unity and diversity’
Back in Gisenyi the children watch a movie produced by Unicef called Transforming Tomorrow before the football begins. The film comprises a series of stories about youth from all over Rwanda.
“It’s about unity and diversity,” said Misbah Sheikh, the Unicef chief communication officer in Kigali. “We don’t use the term ‘tribe’ here, we say ‘different walks of life’.”
As the country strives to meet President Paul Kagame’s “Vision 2020” — setting the ambitious goal of bringing Rwanda from a poor- to middle-income country by the year 2020 — the programme offers a way to bring children from all walks of life together to have a say in their country’s development, says Sheikh.
The children produce stories about HIV/Aids awareness, gender issues and issues of access to education. The technical training will hopefully be used in the future as the kids hope to work in one of the local community radio stations, or start their own station with help from Vision Jeunesse Nouvelle.
“It’s a drop in the bucket,” says Sheikh about the programme combating the challenges facing youth in these areas. “But hopefully it’s a big drop.”