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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.

Talk to you soon,

Madison

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.

Talk to you soon,

Makeda 

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.

Sincerely your friend,

Stephanie

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.

From,

Shane T.

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.

All Participant work can be viewed online.

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.

Vote Verse City at: http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf1597

In other news:

September 22, 2009

Verse City held its first fundraiser of the year, selling 300 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.

How can you help?

Vote! And spread the word!

It takes literally seconds to register.

Register and vote at: http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf1597

There are six days left to vote.

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.

Here’s a glimpse of the conversation that occurred that evening:

See more on CitizenShift

Our dossiers that centre on youth made media, include:

• Focus & Turning Points: Giving youth a Voice

• Out in Schools

• Project Media: Holistic Learning

• Reel Youth

• Revolution Underground

If you have media of any kind (video, articles, audio…) that you feel would compliment any of these dossier topics, contribute!