{"id":22814,"date":"2025-05-04T12:32:52","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T16:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sjc\/?p=22814"},"modified":"2025-05-07T09:00:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T13:00:58","slug":"carleton-journalism-students-head-to-africa-on-life-changing-media-internships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/sjc\/2025\/carleton-journalism-students-head-to-africa-on-life-changing-media-internships\/","title":{"rendered":"Carleton journalism students head to Africa on “life-changing” media internships"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the 20th<\/sup> year in a row, some of Carleton\u2019s top journalism students are gearing up to head to Africa on media internships this spring and summer.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s iteration of the longstanding Global Journalism Internship program will see seven students from Carleton\u2019s Bachelor of Journalism and Master of Journalism programs take up 8-12 week internships in C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, Uganda or Zambia with the Canadian organization Farm Radio International<\/a>. Students will collaborate with local partners to produce podcasts and other works of journalism documenting local solutions to climate change.<\/p>\n

Carleton\u2019s Global Journalism Internships unfolding this year are the continuation of a program that has been in operation since 2006 and has sent more than 300 Carleton journalism students to the Global South to take up media internships.<\/p>\n

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This year’s interns, top row L-R Victor Vigas Alvarez, Madison Eldridge and Claire Hutcheon (on Zoom), Alex Scott and front row, Abyssinia Abede, Raquel Medina and Caelan Monkman.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThese internships have provided life-changing opportunities for many of our students as a capstone to their time at Carleton,\u201d said Allan Thompson, the founder of the internship program and currently the Director of Carleton\u2019s School of Journalism and Communication. \u201cOver two decades, I have made it my mission to keep these internships going because of the remarkable life experience they offer for our students,\u201d Thompson said.<\/p>\n

Working with Farm Radio partners on the ground, the Carleton interns will identify and plan for podcast stories and undertake field travel to rural communities to record video, audio and photography, with a focus on audio. In the end, they will work on the editing and production of podcast episodes, as well as video and written stories.<\/p>\n

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Two of last year’s interns on the ground in Zambia: Adam Tripp (with the microphone) and Sarah St-Pierre.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Carleton internships were originally an offshoot of the partnership Carleton forged in 2006 with the journalism school at the National University of Rwanda, the Rwanda Initiative project that operated from 2006 to 2012 fostering journalism education and independent media in post-genocide Rwanda. Over the first few years of the program, all of the Carleton interns took up placements with Rwandan media outlets.<\/p>\n

But even after the Rwanda partnership wound down, the internships continued, in partnership with several other organizations across Africa, including Farm Radio International.<\/p>\n

For the last three years, Farm Radio\u2019s work on the On Air<\/a> project has been the primary focus of the Carleton internships, producing the Nature Answers\u00a0<\/em>podcast that\u00a0shares stories from rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa, where some of the most vulnerable people on earth are turning to nature for solutions to a changing climate.<\/p>\n

You can listen here to some of the podcast episodes<\/a> from Season 3 of On Air<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Carleton interns include:<\/p>\n