When journalism professor Allan Thompson went to Rwanda in April to participate in a panel on the state of the media in transitional societies, he didn’t expect to come home with a gold medal in a velvet case.
The panel discussion was part of the program for Governor General Michaëlle Jean’s state visit to the African nation. At a subsequent reception at the residence of Canada’s high commissioner to Rwanda, Thompson was surprised to hear his name announced and to receive the medal from Jean.
The medal recognized his work with the Rwanda Initiative, a partnership between Carleton’s School of Journalism and Communication and a similar school at the National University of Rwanda.Since 2006, more than 125 Canadian journalists have gone to Rwanda through the project to work as visiting lecturers and reporters. The project is now part of Carleton’s Centre for Media and Transitional Societies (see article on page 9).
“She seemed to have a real sense of the importance of working to rebuild
the media in Rwanda,” says Thompson. “It’s not easy work, so it was gratifying to have it recognized by someone of the stature of the governor general.”
Like most of the country’s other institutions, Rwanda’s media were devastated by the 1994 genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 Rwandans.
In the formal citation for Thompson’s award, the governor general—a former CBC journalist—said the Rwanda Initiative “fosters a love of journalism and a new generation of Rwandan reporters, ready to uphold the truth—something we in Canada hold so dear.”