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Updated: Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Published: Tuesday, July 26, 2005 |
Contact:
NABJ Communications
(866) 479-NABJ
Two Tapped for NABJ/UN Fellowships to Morocco
WASHINGTON Two NABJ members a sports writer for The Orlando Sentinel and a business reporter for The Post-Dispatch in St. Louis are headed to Morocco to gain international reporting experience through a fellowship offered by NABJ and the United Nations.
NABJ is proud of these two young journalists who are already making valuable contributions to their papers by writing stories that may not otherwise be covered and looking for ways to make readers care, said NABJ President Herbert Lowe, a courts reporter at Newsday.
The fellowship winners, who will cover the second annual Pan-African Youth Leadership Summit set for Aug. 18-23 at the University of Al Akhawain, are:
Shannon Shelton, 27, of The Sentinel. Shelton, who covers North Florida sports, NASCAR and an occasional Jacksonville Jaguars game, plans on writing about immigration and learning if young people believe they have a future in Africa. I live by the mantra that coverage of international affairs should not be limited to those in traditional news departments, her application stated. Just three months ago, I completed a series of articles from Mexico City on NASCAR's efforts to bring its style of motor sports to a completely different culture.
Tavia Evans, 25, of The Post-Dispatch. Evans, who covers breaking news stories on St. Louis companies and real estate, plans to write about Africa's different sides. In her application, she said Africa is often depicted in the international media as one big, poor and war-torn nation. Id like to look at the continent through the daily reality of teenagers in prosperous nation's like Morocco or Algeria and some North African countries, in comparison to what life is like for Senegalese, Gambian and South African teens.
Working together, NABJ and the United Nations have previously offered NABJ members fellowships to cover a summits last year in Senegal and one last month in Brazil. The summits have been co-sponsored by the host governments, the U.N.s New York Office of Sport for Development and Peace, and the Global Peace Initiative of Women.
NABJ's participation is very important, said Djibril Diallo, co-chairman of NABJ's World Affairs Task Force, chairman of the summit in Morocco and director of the sponsoring Office of Sport for Development and Peace. We want to accelerate the fight against hunger and poverty and those are issues that are central to the discussion. We need to make sure the leaders of industrialized nation's keep the promise of financing Africa's development.
An advocacy group established in 1975 in Washington, D.C., NABJ is the largest organization of journalists of color in the nation, with more than 4,100 members, and provides educational, career development and support to black journalists worldwide.
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