This summer, in partnership with the East Metro Youth Services, the Verse City Workshop at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism will present a five-day intensive multimedia journalism camp. The Verse City Journalism Project at Ryerson University is designed to encourage youth from Toronto’s priority neighbourhoods to consider a career in journalism.
After two engaging and successful workshops last month (see student work below), Verse city is holding an opinion writing workshop tomorrow afternoon at Ryerson University. Students will be guided through all the do’s and don’ts of opinion writing by Toronto Star columnist Royson James. James writes extensively on Toronto politics in his weekly columns that appear Tuesday, Thursday and Friday in The Star. Students will be writing their own columns tomorrow on two hot topics in the news lately – Haiti and the TTC. What will they have to say?
I’m writing this letter to tell you that I’m alright and about my experiences here in Rwanda. Firstly, I want to say that I miss you and love you dearly. I love being here away from the distractions and problems back at home. Watching the Rwandans who are care free and happy really helps me be at peace with myself and makes me reflect on past experiences.
I’m having a lot of fun with the children here, who value their innocence and education, which is hard to find back at home. Watching them play brings peaceful thoughts to my mind, about the world and the things around me. A lot of things I have taken for granted I’ve learned to be at peace with.
First off, I just wanted to let you know that I’ve missed you like crazy. Being here in Rwanda, has caused me to feel so many different emotions. I can’t truly describe how I’m feeling right now but just know I feel extremely humbled and relaxed here.
Seeing all the smiling faces and beautifully unharmed scenery is really refreshing. This is an adventure many other people should encounter. Everything about Rwanda has such a delicate feel to it. The people here are even more remarkable. When I say this, I don’t only consider everything that has happened to Rwanda but also everything that has happened to Africa as a whole. The people here are truly warriors.
I can’t imagine life without my family. Many of these people continue on their journey through life without any of their family members around to witness their successes or failures. I find this to be incredibly difficult.
And yet they strive to be happy and live to celebrate another day.
I shall forever be inspired by their determination and willingness to stay happy, despite everything that has affected their homeland.
We had a guest speaker today by the name of Joseph Niyibizi who talked about his life back home in Rwanda when the Genocide happened. He was 7 when it began. He talked about two major tribes who had attacked each other and who had started this little war in this small country. Joseph had to leave a lot behind due to the outburst between the two tribes. They would listen to the radio who instructed them to not help friends and family or let them in for safety. They were told to kill the people who had started this tribal war. What really touched me was the horrible things he had to witness at such a young age like his mother being killed and his father who went missing in 1991. He had suffered a lot throughout his entire life but had help when he truly needed it the most. Now he tells his story to many youth and what he had gone through to survive.
I’m telling you this because if you were here to hear it for yourself you would understand his story just as how I have listening to his.
Today I learned that losing your mom is really painful and sad. I learned this from a young man named Joseph Niybizi who is from Rwanda. He lived through the 1994 genocide and I felt really sorry for him when he shared with us that his mom died and his dad went missing. I think that Joseph was really brave when he was a little boy because he crossed into Congo by himself at the age of only 11. I wouldn’t think that I would be able to do what he did when he was a child. I didn’t think something like this could happen in our world when one million people are killed in only one hundred days. I hope everything that happened in his country doesn’t happen again.
Firstly, Verse City wishes everyone a happy and healthy 2010!
We’re back to business for the new year and January has already proved to be a busy month.
Verse City on Haitian earthquake relief
On Monday, January 18, Verse City in collaboration with Journalists for Human Rights and McClung’s Magazine, both based at Ryerson University, held an emergency fundraiser for the victims of the Haiti earthquake. In just four hours, we raised $1,047 from samosas, baked goods and generous donations. The money raised this week will be matched by Ryerson University (RU), RU president Sheldon Levy, Ryerson’s Student Union and Continuing Education Students’ Association of Ryerson for a total of $4,296. All proceeds will be donated to the Red Cross. Thank you to everyone who donated. Our hearts go out to all those affected by this devastating earthquake.
Verse City Multimedia Workshop - Jan. 23
Verse City is holding its first workshop for the new year on Saturday, January 23.
In addition to Ryerson School of Journalism faculty and Verse City student reporting mentors, multimedia journalist, Jordana Divon will be on-site to faciliate discussion and guide students through the technical and stylistic aspects of multimedia journalism. Divon is a freelance journalist and currently works as a copy editor for Metro News Canada.
The “Winter in the City” themed workshop will have youth participants work in groups to create a soundslide using photos and audio they capture in the city.
Verse City International Journalism Workshop - Jan. 30
Verse City is holding an international journalism workshop on Saturday, January 30. Facilitated by broadcast and new media journalist Jennifer Hollett, the day-workshop will introduce youth participants to covering news that crosses local borders. Hollett is a former Much Music VJ and currently, a contributor to CBC News Network’s prime time show Connect with Mark Kelley.
Participants will listen to a guest speaker from Rwanda and write a short reflection on what they heard.
Sports Journalism Workshop - Jan. 30
Verse City is also holding a sports journalism workshop on Saturday, January 30.
The Superbowl themed workshop will be hosted by recent Ryerson grad Michelle Farrugia, who currently hosts Oshawa Generals coverage and Brooklin Redmen Lacrosse action on Rogers TV.
Partipants will work in groups to come up with a story idea related to the Superbowl and present their work in a short article or video.
For the past few weeks we’ve been focusing heavily on the Aviva grant and gathering new supporters to vote for our cause. It was a great experience and we actually got a lot of great publicity on and off Ryerson’s campus. Thanks to everyone who voted and helped out!
But here at Verse City we love to multi-task. So while we’ve been working frantically on the Aviva project, we’ve been organizing fundraisers, workshops and brainstorming other innovative ways to make Verse City bigger and better.
Fundraisers
We’ve held two successful fundraisers so far, selling a grand total of 900 samosas over the course of just five hours! We’re planning on holding another fundraiser soon, and we promise it’ll be just as mouth-watering as the first two.
Mingle
We’re also planning to hold a mixer for the students at our journalism school. We want our students to be more involved in this community project and since a lot of you don’t know too much about what we do, we’d love for you to join us for a little party so you can involve yourselves in this fantastic project. Updates on that soon!
Workshops
Verse City, in addition to the five-day summer camp, holds a series of workshops throughout the year. Saturday Nov. 21 is our next one, which will focus on fashion journalism. We have Rea McNamara, a style columnist for Eye Weekly magazine and Dwayne Evans, a very innovative fashion photographer coming in to guest host the seminars.
We also have a series of workshops coming up in the new year so stay tuned for those.
Future
If you’ve been following our Aviva grant you’ll know we want to bring our journalism workshops to on-reserve aboriginal youth. We’re actively looking for funding and grants and are really serious about making this happen. Take a look at the Aviva page if you haven’t already.
We’ve even started planning our summer workshop!
That’s we’re up to. Thanks for reading and keep supporting Verse City!
It has been a hectic week of mass promotion - Facebook, Twitter, mass emails and even a samosa sale. And now we’re about to do it again.
Verse City ended the first round with a whopping 1449 votes in under a week - Amazing!
Unfortunately, we did not make the semi-finals in this round.
But if at first you don’t succeed - try, try, try again.
In fact, we have 12 days to try again. And with your support, Verse City will advance to the semi-finals and remain eligible for the grant we need to further our cause and continue to support our youth.
Verse City held its first fundraiser of the year, selling300 samosas. The sale, scheduled to run for four hours sold out in its first hour and a half.
September 29, 2009
In light of the success of our first samosa sale, Verse City held a second sale the following week. With double the samosas and an email sign-up sheet, the second sale raised funds and awareness for the Verse City project.
Our summer camp was a success and our weekend workshops have begun. But Verse City is looking to expand its cause.
What do we want to do?
Verse City wants to give silenced Aboriginal youth a voice. The minimal coverage Aboriginal people do receive involve poverty, substance and sexual abuse. Conflict and tragedy gets reported but their success stories rarely do. As a result, their community is misrepresented as trouble-ridden.
Such misconceptions are further fuelled by the absence of a strong Aboriginal presence in the newsroom.
By working closely with Aboriginal youth, they will learn to think critically, improve their media literacy, and challenge such representations through different forms of journalism.
The Aboriginal community are a people founded upon oral traditions. Let their stories be heard.
How are we going to do this?
We’ve applied for a grant via the Aviva Community Fund and we need all the votes we can get to move onto the second round.
Please help Verse City make this endeavour a reality.
In other news:
Affiliate group at Ryerson University
We are now an affiliate group at Ryerson University. This means we are a student group at our university who still maintains external affiliations. In our case, East Metro Youth Services (EMYS).
Culture and music journalism workshop
On Saturday, October 24, 2009 we held our first workshop for the 2009/2010 year. The culture and music themed workshop, featured music journalist Errol Nazareth. Nazareth is a columnist for Eye Weekly and a freelance music journalist who has written extensively on black and world music for various publications and CBC radio programs.
Nazareth stressed the importance of networking in journalism and encouraged participating students to contact him for advice and feedback on their ideas and writing.
Participating students were second-year students at Say Word, a branch of the Violence Intervention Project (VIP) multimedia program. Some Say Word graduates who attended the summer camp were present as well.
The Verse City project reflects a large contingent of projects we have collaborated on over the years. Last October (2008), CITIZENShift brought together a number of groups working with youth and teaching media literacy. Most of them had developed, or had been developing, dossiers on our website about their projects. The surge in these initiatives led us to wonder what all these groups had in common, how their experiences compared to one another and, among other things, we thought it would be nice for the participants and workshop leaders to meet one another.
Here’s a glimpse of the conversation that occurred that evening:
Arti Patel is a third-year journalism student at Ryerson, specializing in online and television journalism. She enjoys mentoring and exploring different cultures and their lifestyles. Currently she is the volunteer and outreach coordinator at Verse City.
Colleen Tang has just completed her first year as a Masters of Journalism student at Ryerson University learning more about feature writing and online journalism. She has just finished up an internship at CityNews.ca and has just started an internship at CBCNews.ca.
Irene Quarcoo (Class of 2009) specialises in radio, television and multimedia. An honours graduate, Irene is an avid traveller and came to Canada as an international student. She has completed several international internships, most recently at the CBC's London bureau and is working at the City of Toronto's Office of the Ombudsman over the summer.
Irene has been involved with the Verse City project since its early days and will be serving as Tech and Curriculum Coordinator at this year's summer camp.
Julianna McDermott is a third-year journalism student majoring in broadcast journalism. In the future, she hopes to cover international affairs and human rights issues.
Lisa Bruni is a recent graduate from Ryerson's four-year journalism program, with a major in broadcast. She hopes to continue her academic career in law so she can not only report on legal issues facing minorities, but also provide legal defence to those who can't defend themselves.
Lora Grady is a graduate of Ryerson's magazine stream and former co-editor-in-chief of McClung's Magazine, Ryerson's voice for women. She has written for the Ryerson Review of Journalism, Purchasing B2B, Design Edge Canada and MastheadOnline.
Omair Quadri is a third-year student at the Ryerson School of Journalism.
After graduation, he hopes to cover international issues and get sent to a war zone.
Sachin Seth is a third-year journalism student working toward a career in television journalism. He hopes to impact and report on issues concerning human rights and global politics.
Samantha Edwards is a third-year journalism student at Ryerson University, specializing in online and magazine. She has an interest in environmental journalism and loves riding her burgundy bicycle.
Vinita Srivastava is a multimedia artist and the director of both the Verse
City Project and the online program at the School of Journalism at Ryerson
University.
