Children Media Producers Award 2012
Tuesday 28th February Afghan Children Media Producers for the first time ever received an award for their contribution to Afghan children’s social, educational and cultural lives. The event was organized by MMCC, Mobile Mini Circus for Children and its local partner AECC, Afghan Educational Children Circus as part of the two organizations continued advocacy for improvement of children’s access to quality education and culture.
More than 15 Afghan Media attended the event that took place in a packed press conference room in the Ministry of Culture and Information in Kabul. In the event MMCC/AECC also presented a selection of radio, video and multimedia programs produced by children in its big educational winter program, that this year focused on teaching children to make and express themselves through their own media.
Every year, during the 3 month public schools winter holiday, 300-350 boys and girls attend daily classes in the MMCC/AECC center, that among more has its own radio studio as well as computer and internet rooms with equipment and facilities for children to learn to record and edit their own films and produce their own radio programs. Photo and Print Magazine production are in addition among the activities and classes.
‘We should work for children programs in the televisions’, said deputy minister of Culture, Mobarez Rashedi, while thanking MMCC/AECC for organizing the event and encouraging the media to broadcast more children programs produced for children. ‘Children programs should be aimed at children not adults’, the deputy minister continued and used Islamic programs as an example of programs that often has a form and utilizes a language that is difficult for children to understand.
‘Those who are most qualified to communicate with children should be the ones producing children programs. When I talk to you, I should use words you understand, but this is not what I am used to and it makes it difficult for me’, Mobaraz Rashedi told the 250 children who attended the event. The event also marked the launching of a new website: www.AfghanMMCC.org/Voices, in which more than 200 Children’s Voices are presented with photo, text and audio – entirely made by the children themselves with adults only acting as technical supervisors.
‘I want to become a TV-announcer and I will tell the children’s problems to the media’, explains a boy at the website. While more Children’s Voices in the website indicates that the Afghan children, ones they grow up, large scale wishes to contribute to improve education and security for children, others have even higher goals such as:
‘I want to become head of the Parliament. If I become the chairman of the parliament I will defend the rights of the children and I will issue good laws for children in the constitution’.
The Afghan Children’s Voices website is part of a larger program that MMCC/AECC is currently looking for financial support to continue and expand to include children across Afghanistan. The program combines Children Shura and Children Media activities teaching children to express their wishes, needs and problems while at the same time providing them tools for communicating it to the world.