Red Cross Blogs

Red Cross young reporter competition: win an overseas trip

By Sarah Oughton
September 20, 2010 at 2:15 pm

If you are aged 18-25, are passionate about humanitarian issues and fancy yourself as an international reporter – then this is your lucky day!

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is running a Young Reporter Competition and five lucky winners will be selected for an overseas trip to visit a Red Cross project in either Georgia, Lebanon, Liberia, the Philippines or Senegal.

The competition is open until 1 October and involves submitting a communication project on a humanitarian topic of your choice.

The prize involves a one-week mission in which the winners will investigate how fighting and armed violence affects young people.

Red Cross staff in-country will coach the young reporters, facilitating his or her contacts with local youth and introducing them to relevant programmes.

Each reporter will then produce a ‘story from the field’, which will be presented at a special event in Geneva around the time of World Red Cross Red Crescent Day next year.

The competition is open to all young people, including unpaid Red Cross volunteers and coincides with the International Year of Youth.

Visit the ICRC website for further details and the application form.

Writing tips

1.    Use clear and simple language.*
2.    Choose a subject you feel passionate about.
3.    Use the active voice rather than the passive voice.

*The biggest pitfall when writing about humanitarian issues is getting caught up with all the jargon. As a reporter your job is to cut through all the ‘development speak’ (beneficiaries, disaster risk reduction, resilience, PHAST methodology, food insecurity etc) and use language that the general public will understand.

For more guidance you could check out these guidelines written by the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

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Tags: competition, International Committee, journalism

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