Wave your flag

This past week has been very eventful. The first event was a picnic, which formed part of  a partnership between Mary Waters High School and the Journalism Department. This term, first year journalism students have been paired with learners from Mary Waters to write profiles on each other. This initiative is supposed to help the high school learners to practice and improve their writing skills. The picnic was organized in order to help the Mary Waters learners and the Rhodes students to get to know each other. Naturally we solicited two of our Upstarters from Mary Waters to be field reporters on the day.

                                              Picnic

Anesipho was to interview Rod Amner, a journalism lecturer and Elizabeth Adesina, an English teacher from Mary Waters. Anesipho pulled it off like a pro. I thought she’d be nervous interviewing the lecturer and the teacher, nope no signs of nervs. She assembled her recorder as we’d taught her before. She asked her interviewees to introduce themselves and from there she firedaway asking, questions I hadn’t even thought of. Mike and I were pleasantly surprised to see her assert herself and confidently conduct the interview.

 Elizabeth Adesina talking about how her learners will benefit from the partnership

Rod Amner talking about the merits of the partnership between his department and Mary Waters High School

Thobani was our second field reporter on the day. He was prepared to do a vox pop, getting the views of both the learners and students involved in this partnership. He’s condition though, was that he wouldn’t be accompanied. He took his recorder and off he went. None of us were present to his assess his interviewing skills but from listening to it later he did a good job.

 Myself and Mike also accompanied Anesipho and Thobani on a trip to Addo Elephant National Park this past weekend. The trip was organized by Wild Reach, an organization that seeks to introduce children from the township to nature and the concept of nature conservation. This time around I appointed the task of conducting an interview with the ‘official voices’ to Thobani. The assignment was, more particularly, to speak to the organizers of the trip. Once again Thobani didn’t want to be accompanied and assures he’d be able to handle the interview. His exact words were “come on Bkaay you know me”. Feedback from his interviewees was that he did an outstanding job, he asked good questions and held his own. Apparently before conducting the interview he asked the three organizers to switch their cellphones off. For me hearing that was a proud moment. Anesipho did a good job of doing a vox pops with the Upstarters who went on the trip with us. She’s really good at formulating questions on her feet.

 Judging from this experience,  I think the Upstarters are ready to do some things on their own. In fact, and in some instances they are crying out for that opportunity. They’ve demonstrated that they’re capable to do well at certain tasks and that when the time comes when we leave them behind, they’d do just fine without us.

 At the same time, I feel that, although that time will come, we’re not there yet. Upstart Radio Team might have mastered the interviewing bit but there’s still a lot more to be done. There is, in particular, a need to assist them in developing some long-term  plans for building the show. For example, Thobani,  Anesipho and the other members of the team need to think about ways of building an audience for the show. How will they get the other Upstarters who were on the Addo trip to listen to the show? And this goes not only for next week Saturday, when they will hear themselves on the radio, but also in the long term.  The Upstart Radio Team  need to ensure that they’ll keep listening beyond that, and they’ll get their mates listening as well.

 I think the easiest audience pool to target are the other Upstarters, just like the ones who went on the trip. They’re already part of an existing network and come from different schools in different areas in Grahamstown. If the Radio Team can draw this already established network, then they will know that someone is listening, not just someone but an Upstarter who can relate to them and the content they produce. I am sure there are existing channels of communication within the Upstart network that Yung Amplified can exploit. For example, the Upstart clubs meet each week at schools all over Grahamstown. The cool thing about this is that the Radio Team can use these workshops as a forum for audience feedback. So the Yung Amplified team can hear what their Upstart mates at school think of the show and its content.

Mixit proved to be a unending maze this week, apparently there different versions of MXit that people are registered into  and there’s a version that connect to Facebook. According to the Upstarters people aren’t as crazy about Mxit anymore because there’s WatsApp now. I couldn’t keep up with their explanation, at some point I was lost in the maze of versions and upgrades. We’ve decided that a Yung Amplified Upstarter will be responsible for making sure that Yung Amplified has a presence on Mxit and that people using the site know about the show and are interacting with us. He’ll add or is invite everyone on the team and everyone else will add their friends. I need to stress here that this is a responsibility, interacting with the audience is a crucial part of our show and will demand a level of commitment from the Upstarter taking this on, this also means that this Upstarter will need to be monitored by one of the radio students.

 We have a lot cut out for us, but we’ve come a long way. If you look into the horizon, focus your eyes and slightly close your eyes, you’ll see a brigade of young radio journos proudly waving the flag. Am proud of my team and the Upstarters.