Twenty Lithuanian schoolchildren prepared original journalistic stories about the present in Africa in order to show the diversity of the continent. NARA journalists and experts from the African Research and Consultancy Center "AfriKo" assisted them during the process.
Two winners were announced at the final call of the contest. This summer - or as soon as the coronavirus situation allows - they will fly to one of the African countries to continue their journalistic work.
One of the winners was Julija Stankevičiūtė and her work "LGBTQ+ rights in South Africa: everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others". The 12th grader of Kaunas "Veršvų" Gymnasium contacted three people of the LGBTQ+ community from the Republic of South Africa via Instagram in order to understand whether the country's progressive constitution ensures equality in everyday life.
The second winner is Arnas Rasimavičius, who chose the comics medium for his story "Rhythm in the blood". The 11th grader of the Prienai "Žiburio" high school connected threads between slavery songs and African fine art and showed how the long-ignored culture of black artists became dominant. Creators such as Miles Davis, Jean-Michel Basquiat or Kanye West come to life in his illustrations.
All works will be published
NARA journalists have selected five works that they plan to publish in the NARA space. The works of other participants will also be published online to be publicly available and thus help to change the often stereotypical narrative about Africa that dominates the Lithuanian media and has real consequences for the people living there and for Africans living in Lithuania.
"The works of the students gave us a lot of hope that we can create more diverse stories about the world. And in general, to imagine journalism in a different way, demanding more from this profession. We started the competition in order to share knowledge with the participants, but in the end we learned just as much from them," says Berta Tilmantaitė, co-founder of NARA, whose work has been published in National Geographic, AlJazeera and other international media.
"AfriKo" co-founder Eugenija Kovaliova drew attention to the fact that the most important thing in the competition was not even the result, but the process leading up to it. "The highlight of the last virtual session was not the announcement of the winners, but the students' comments about the internal transformations during the competition. They shared that the time spent together gave them self-confidence, pushed them to overcome challenges when it seemed they could give up. It also helped some to discover themselves. This gave me a lot of optimism about what kind of people will create the future of Lithuania", says Eugenija Kovaliova.
81 schoolchildren applied to the competition which was held for the first time this year, 44 of them were invited to the training. During the project, students went through intensive courses on the basics of African history and journalism. Completed works were submitted to the competition by 20 students who went through the entire project process from the selection in September 2020 to the finish in February 2021.
The competition "Africa Is Not a Country" is financed from the funds of the Development cooperation and support for democracy program. We will inform about the publication of students' works on NARA and AfriKo social networks.