In April 2003, The Big Issue Namibia, a monthly magazine sold on the streets by the homeless and unemployed, launched the Community Journalism Mentoring Programme, funded by the Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa (NiZA).

The two-year course is designed to impart basic skills in community journalism to 12 participants from around the country, including Walvis Bay, Lüderitz, Katima Mulilo, Ongwediva and Windhoek. Those taking part in the course are either community activists interested in improving their writing skills or reporters working for community newspapers who do not have any formal training in journalism.

Training session

Two Big Issue Namibia vendors, Stanley Snyders and Fillipus Nghinyengulwa, are also among the participants, and a story by Nghinyengulwa on an HIV-AIDS organisation in Windhoek’s informal settlements was published in the June 2004 issue of the magazine.

Says Snyders, who has been selling The Big Issue Namibia for almost two years: "When I first started the course last year, it was very difficult because writing is not so easy for me. But when I carried on I realised that these things are very good and I learnt how to write a story. I read the Republikein and a lot of Afrikaans books and I know it’s a good thing to start a journalism class. Some day I can move on in life and get somewhere."

Interviewing skills

Training session

The programme is run by the magazine’s editor, Sarah Taylor, with assistance from Pauliina Shilongo, a lecturer at the Polytechnic of Namibia’s Media Technology Department and Big Issue trustee. Visiting speakers have also been invited to provide their input, including journalist Lindsay Dentlinger from The Namibian newspaper, visiting Polytechnic lecturer, Bob Moore, from Elizabeth Town College, Pennsylvania, and Big Issue South Africa founding member Raymond Joseph.

Topics covered so far have included: What is community journalism?, Public listening skills, What is news?, Interviewing techniques, Information gathering and Feature writing.

While four participants have dropped out of the programme since April for personal reasons, they have since been replaced by others who have shown interest in developing writing and interviewing skills, and bringing issues from their respective communities into the public domain.

Feedback

To date five weekend-long training workshops have been held in Windhoek, while participants have been submitting news and feature stories, and receiving feedback, during the two to three months between each workshop.
A number of these stories have been published and the participants are currently working on joint features around a common topic, which should be ready for publication soon.

Participant Vicky Marshall from Luderitz, who is currently working as a ministerial clerk, says: "I love journalism and I always wanted to do it but wasn’t in a position to attend formal courses. This course has opened a new avenue for me. I have found it very useful learning how to formulate a feature story. When I complete the course I’d like to do a correspondence course in journalism."

Sarah Taylor is editor of The Big Issue Namibia

Read further:

The Big Issue Namibia: A hand up, not a hand out!