UNDP in Ukraine

It took only two months for a couple of active young people in Zolotonosha to create and publish the first regional newspaper for their city’s young readers. Their unique initiative has been supported by a joint UNV and UNDP project “Youth Social Inclusion for Civic Engagement in Ukraine”.

Three young men who started the project finished high school, were admitted to part-time study programmes at universities and have never known that a youth centre existed in their city. But, thanks to the network administrators and the Internet, these young men learned about a regional conference for young leaders that was organized by the Cherkasy Regional Youth Resource Centre on 4-6 September 2009. At the conference, the boys made new friends and learned about the existing youth centre in the city of Zolotonosha.

Without wasting any time, on the very next day the young men met up with the manager of the youth centre, Oksana Chervyakova, and offered their help in organizing the Centre's activities.

First, they hosted a meeting with active young people in the city. They wanted to identify the interests of the city’s youth, how they perceived the youth centre’s work and their role in it. As a result, a clear goal was identified: the city needed a youth newspaper! The only source of information for about 13,000 young people in the city was Internet, access to which, unfortunately, was not available for all those who wanted to stay informed of recent developments.

The only city newspaper was hardly oriented towards the needs of young people. For these reasons, the youth needed a newspaper and, besides, it was simply interesting to see if they could try on new roles: those of reporters, photographers, designers, and editors.

The key task of the ‘STEPler’ newspaper, as it was called, was to make youth more active by taking part in the creation of a newspaper and by attracting young readers who were interested in the affairs of their home city and youth culture in it. Moreover, the newspaper would help in spreading information about various activities in the city among the wider population, particularly, among young people.

The project came into life with the help of the UNV-led small grants project, which gave UAH 1,500 to help set up an editorial office and publish two issues of the newspaper. In addition to this, a number of partner organizations joined in the project: the Cherkasy NGO “Centre for Social Partnership” who was pleased to help with the grant; Liudmyla Varenyk, Head of Zolotonosha Department for Family and Youth, who helped to establish contacts with the authorities and educational institutions in the city; the Publishing House of Zolotonosha, who consented to print the newspaper on preferential terms and, finally, Svitlana Sobova, a staff member in the UNDP “Youth Social Inclusion for Civic Engagement in Ukraine” Project, who became the community-based project coordinator.

But a number of questions remained: for instance, how to write? How to write to be interesting for readers? To answer these questions, Svitlana Kopiyka, a practising journalist and a former instructor, organized a workshop. It turned out that writing is not easy, as you need to know what structure to use: what to begin with, how to end, how to shorten material and not lose its main points. Volunteers also learned that sometimes using just one active word in a headline and arranging the articles in columns of different sizes helps in keeping the reader interested.

Where do you find the information? The volunteers discovered that there were enough celebrities and sensations in their home town -  they just needed to be attentive: for instance, the newspaper found Vitaliy Dzhura, a master of aerography; as well as rap bands and even parkour experts.

The first issue of the newspaper was devoted to the Student's Day. The central article was an interview with the directors of city’s education institutions, in which they spoke about their student year: what kind of students they had been, whether they skipped classes, and whether they used cheat sheets. Although the interviewees were a bit ashamed, they had to confess to their readers that their student years were not without sins. ‘The cheat sheets will stay forever!’, Tetyana Bober, Deputy Director of Zolotonosha School of Veterinary Medicine said confidently.

Of course, the first issue could not avoid the topic of the quarantine and flu epidemic. The student life news was interesting to all: both for students who could compare their experiences and for school graduates, who could learn about what they were to expect.

Everything, from interviewing to the newspaper’s layout, was done by volunteers, school pupils and students. Finally, despite certain obstacles – a three-week quarantine forced them to postpone the publishing of the first issue – 500 copies of the first Zolotonosha youth newspaper ‘STEPler’ entered the world!

On the day after the newspaper was published interesting things started happening. First, the number of those who wanted to try their hand at journalism doubled; second, the editor of the existing local newspaper offered to cooperate and suggested that ‘STEPler’ could come out as a supplement to the local newspaper.

The second issue of the newspaper was devoted to the New Year's holidays. New names appear in it, in addition to those already on the editorial board, which means that new volunteers have joined the group.

‘You are doing a very good job!’, said the school principal Oleksandr Kurylo, while the local newspaper even re-printed one of their articles.

Cooperation with the local newspaper “Zlatokraj” is planned for the future, so we hope that the youth newspaper ‘STEPler’ will have a long life! For their part, its creators are ready and willing to share the secrets of their success with others who are interested.