The International Children’s Day of Broadcasting (ICDB) will be acknowledged on 5 March, a date which also marks 100 days to the kick-off of the FIFA Confederations Cup. ICDB will take place at Gold Reef City (just outside of Johannesburg) and feature a group of talented South African children who were selected through two competitive initiatives run by SABC Education – State Your Mind and I’m a Writer.
There will be a focus and experience of old and new technology, followed by an experiential viewing of a 4D movie. The children will also have the chance to meet their favourite SABC personalities at the soccer corner which boasts the SABC hexagon table soccer and FIFA play station. From a mock studio, children journalists will conduct live crossing interviews during Radio 2000 Afro Moja Show.
Launched in 1991, ICDB encourages broadcasters around the world to focus on broadcasting content based on the hopes, dreams and fears of children. The significance of ICDB is for broadcasters to allow children to be part of programming content because they are an integral part of creating and producing material. ICDB has recently added International Children’s Day of Broadcasting awards into their calendar.
The children participating at Gold Reef City share a common interest in ICDB and the awards. Filming from the day, as well as footage and content from the competitive initiatives that celebrate ICDB, will be sent to the ICDB awards. State Your Mind children are presenters of various educational radio programmes and I’m a Writer children are winners of a writing competition where material in the form of song, poem or short story is made into short radio or television inserts which the children help produce.
The awards are open to radio and television broadcasters who participate in ICDB. To be eligible for the ICDB awards, child and youth created or oriented content must be broadcast on or around the day designated by UNICEF as ICDB. UNICEF has invited broadcasters to create special programming around ICDB for submission to win the award that will honour radio broadcasters who capture the spirit of ICDB.
SABC’s Head of Tweens and Youth Development unit, Mpho Moagi says “We take children issues seriously, that’s why we launched the State Your Mind competition, which provided a platform for children of Mzansi to have a voice and an opinion. These 10 winning stories, poems and songs will be produced by children for children to communicate to children in this country and internationally through the UNICEF competition.”
