Stu­dents from Ma­yaro and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties have com­plet­ed an in­ten­sive eight-week train­ing pro­gramme in Me­dia and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Arts, con­duct­ed by Se­nior Broad­cast Jour­nal­ist and me­dia ed­u­ca­tor, Stephen Cum­mings.

The train­ing took place at the BP Re­source Cen­tre in Ma­yaro and start­ed on March 8, end­ing on May 3.

Cum­mings cov­ered key ar­eas of the me­dia in­dus­try, in­clud­ing Ra­dio Broad­cast­ing, Tele­vi­sion Broad­cast­ing, Print and Dig­i­tal Me­dia, and Pub­lic Speak­ing.

All par­tic­i­pants re­ceived Cer­tifi­cates of Par­tic­i­pa­tion in recog­ni­tion of their suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the course.

The train­ing ini­tia­tive aimed to equip par­tic­i­pants—many of whom were young as­pir­ing me­dia pro­fes­sion­als and stu­dents—with prac­ti­cal skills, hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence, and a foun­da­tion­al un­der­stand­ing of com­mu­ni­ca­tion arts in both tra­di­tion­al and dig­i­tal for­mats.

The pro­gramme al­so re­ceived valu­able com­mu­ni­ty sup­port, in­clud­ing back­ing from for­mer Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray, whose en­cour­age­ment and en­dorse­ment con­tributed to the suc­cess and reach of the ini­tia­tive.

Lead fa­cil­i­ta­tor Stephen Cum­mings, a vet­er­an broad­cast­er and com­mu­ni­ca­tions ed­u­ca­tor, com­mend­ed the com­mit­ment and en­thu­si­asm of the stu­dents.

“It was heart­en­ing to wit­ness the growth of each par­tic­i­pant over the eight weeks. These young peo­ple are now bet­ter pre­pared to en­ter the world of me­dia or use their skills to pos­i­tive­ly in­flu­ence their com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

Plans are cur­rent­ly be­ing ex­plored to ex­pand the train­ing pro­gramme to oth­er rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, with the goal of em­pow­er­ing more young peo­ple through me­dia ed­u­ca­tion.