Yaroslav Ovcharenko, Uzbekistan
Summer is the favourite season for  students because of their school holidays. Fourteen students from schools in Ferghana,  Uzbekistan, spent their summer break in an unusual camp about journalism. Organised by the children's media center Yangi Avlod (Young Generation) with the support of UNICEF (Uzbekistan), the summer camp was held in Kuvasai, Ferghana. Even the title of the camp was unusual: "Children about Children in the Media."

The camp was educational and the young participants learned many things about journalism. They were trained by media professionals from Tashkent, including Sunatulla Kuziev, director of Yangi Avlod; Ulugbek Giyosov, representative of the TV channel Yoshlar, and Nargiz Kosimova, a teacher at Tashkent State University. The students explored ways to conduct interviews, write reports, record videos and edit them.

Kuziev later told the participants: “Your one-minute videos, reports and articles will be published in many Uzbekistan newspapers like Turkestan and Youth of Uzbekistan, magazines like Gulkhan and Yangi Avlod, as well as the UNICEF (Uzbekistan) website.” All the student videos were presented on the national Uzbek youth TV channel Yoshlar in September last year.

Sergey Ovcharenko, a student from Ferghana State University, said, “The conditions in the camp were not very good. We lived in the Kuvasai Academic Lyceum dormitory in small and not very comfortable rooms. There was one room for six students without bathrooms. We didn’t have cold and hot running  water. We had one washstand outside the dormitory and there was a swimming pool.” He, however, added, “But we came here to study journalism and we achieved good results. This camp made me think about my future. I would like to try to become a journalist."

During the five-day camp, participants worked in the educational Internet center of the program “Global Connections and Exchange - Uzbekistan” using Yangi Avlod and UNICEF websites. They learned how to work effectively in a team and to make good relationships. In the evenings, they had free time to play football or dance at the disco. The students went home with 10 movies and reports on youth-related issues like ecological problems, cigarettes and alcohol.