Within ten months of her first full time employment as a journalist, Hannah Ojo has benefited from three journalism opportunities; trip to New York, Kenya and funded investigative assignment. Read and learn from her experience.
Three journalism opportunities have stood out for me since 2015 till date.
In May 2015, barely a month after being employed at The Nation Newspaper as a staff reporter, I came across a call for training organized by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in collaboration with the United Nations.
The information shared on the Facebook wall of a mutual friend advertised a course on ‘Reporting Sustainable Development Goals in a Challenging climate.’ I applied and was among the seven journalists selected for the training in Lagos.
507 journalists were trained in 35 countries worldwide. The training came with a reporting opportunity for 10 journalists, based on the quality of stories written after the training. The first five got a reporting fellowship to cover the 70th United Nations General Assembly in New York, while the other five were in Paris to cover the summit on climate change. I was one of the first five.
Apart from providing a platform on the international stage; there was also networking opportunities with other journalists from various parts of the world. The opportunity also exposed me to the rich source of news in reporting development. There is also the advantage of getting resources and information which are advertised to alumni of the course.
The Access Nigeria Investigative Reporting training was held in Abuja between 26th -30th of October 2015. It was organised by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. The trained journalists got a chance to pitch stories for grants to the tune of 1000 USD. It is important to state that the training opportunity which a friend sent to my Twitter handle gave me an opportunity to report on my most exciting journalism project till date.
The third opportunity was an all expenses paid citizen journalism training on Tax Power at the Global Platform Nairobi in collaboration with ActionAid tax power team. Although I was nominated to attend the training by my mentor, participants are required to write investigative stories using multi media platforms like blogs, videos and pictures.
For me, benefiting from these opportunities has not only helped to sharpen the prospects of my journalism career; it is also offering the platforms to make my dream of being an accomplished journalist of international repute a reality.
