Living outside my bubble...

By Raessa Begum Rehman

This Journalism, Democracy, Development and Critical Media Production course 2010 has not only been an enjoyable experience for me, but an eye opening one as well. We as student journalists were taken out of our comfort-zone of Rhodes University and had our barriers shifted to the rest of the Grahamstown community ridden with issues and problems beyond our capacity to help such as lack of water, RDP housing and no recreational activities or facilities for the youth. These issues among many others have been explored. Being a radio student, working with a photojournalism student was probably one of my best experiences of this course. It had given me to opportunity to meet someone who specialised in a very visual form of journalism. This was daunting and at the same time extremely exciting as we collaborated our thoughts, ideas and training in the past year and produced media that we are really and truly proud of. We put together an audio slide show showcasing the lack of internet facilities in our wards (7 & 8). My partner and I made a personal decision to create two audio slide shows: One highlighted the lack of internet facilities in the township and the other showcased an ex-prisoner, Vuyolwethu Nekile who is trying to start up an internet café in the township and is looking for sponsors. We were able to engage to a large extent with the people we interviewed coming out of the course, creating relationships with the people we met along the way.

We as a class, channelled our energy towards an alternative kind of journalism, different to what we have been trained to do in the past two and a half years. Moving away from the writing skills courses in first year journalism, the production course in second year and current affairs and reporting earlier this year, I can safely say that JDD-CMP has definitely made me not only a better community journalist, but a more thoughtful person. At times I felt helpless listening to people’s issues but now realise that I can help. By providing a platform for the community to air their views and issues, I, as a training journalist, am in fact a catalyst for change and hope to follow through with this in the near future. So many people need their voices to be heard and we have the power to expose those voices and hopefully make an impact in the community striving for betterment and change.

Personally, I would have loved for this course to run over an entire semester. Time was a huge factor. Getting people to talk about what affected them most and trying to establish stronger bonds with the community takes much more than a couple of weeks. I see myself dedicating alot more time to do my bit for communities who need that extra bit of special attention. Living outside of my bubble has made me appreciate life much more and I hope that in the future, this course would open many other students’ eyes as it did mine.