Oscar van Leer Fellowships

The six inaugural Oscar van Leer Fellows completed their specially-designed training programme in young children and the media at the Radio Netherlands Training Centre in summer 2010.

Selected stories by the Fellows

Aumenta cobertura, pero calidad es reto
Tatiana Velasquez, Barranquilla (Colombia), 29 April 2011
Al Atlántico le va bien en la vacunación de sus niños
Tatiana Velasquez, Barranquilla (Colombia), 18 April 2011
Con un grito también se maltrata a un niño
Tatiana Velasquez, Barranquilla (Colombia), 13 April 2011
Un paso más en la lucha contra la desnutrición
Tatiana Velasquez, Barranquilla (Colombia), 9 April 2011
Aliméntelos con amor y serán sanos mañana
Tatiana Velasquez, Barranquilla (Colombia), 8 April 2011
Moms market
Namita Kohli, Hindustan Times, 12 March 2011
Kenyan children get the jab of life 
Erick Wamanji, Radio Netherlands World, 22 February 2011
The allure of gold pulls children out of school for the mines
Nick Oluoch, The Standard (Kenya), 25 November 2010
Hunt on for man over bid to sell albino child
Nick Oluoch, The Standard (Kenya), 18 November 2010
Food you can bank on, if you know where to find it
Kanina Foss, The Star (South Africa), 12 November 2010
Pupils find teachers in computers
Erick Wamanji, Radio Netherlands World, 29 October 2010
The amazing Grace of Samburu
Erick Wamanji, The Standard (Kenya), 22 October 2010
Mitos sexuales, aún entre adolescentes (page 6, in Spanish)
Tatiana Velasquez, Barranquilla (Colombia), 19 October 2010
Matrícula Básica baja durante 5 años; lo atribuyen a depuración estadísticas (in Spanish)
Carmen Matos, Hoy (Dominican Republic), 23 September 2010
La matrícula en educación Inicial crece bajo el dominio aún del sector privado (in Spanish)
Carmen Matos, Hoy (Dominican Republic), 22 September 2010
Teacher denies defiling pupils, freed on bond
Nick Oluoch, The Standard (Kenya), 20 September 2010
Educación permitiría alcanzar todos los Objetivos del Milenio (in Spanish)
Carmen Matos, Hoy (Dominican Republic), 11 September 2010
How criminals take over widows in Nyanza
Nick Oluoch, The Standard (Kenya), 7 September 2010
Faltan parques: ¿dónde juegan nuestros niños? (page 2, in Spanish)
Tatiana Velasquez, Barranquilla (Colombia), 24 August 2010
Aborto, el 'coco' de las aulas escolares (page 4, in Spanish)
Tatiana Velasquez, Barranquilla (Colombia), 13 August 2010
Centros de Excelencia de la Educación Media son modelos para el sistema (in Spanish)
Carmen Matos, Hoy (Dominican Republic), 12 July 2010
The search for heirs in Haryana
Namita Kohli, Hindustan Times, 27 June 2010
En Holanda los niños tienen poder (in Spanish)
Tatiana Velasquez, El Heraldo (Colombia), 25 June 2010

Bios and video introductions

Brief bios of the six Oscar van Leer Fellows, together with links to their personal blogs, are below. Five of the six inaugural Fellows visited The Hague in November 2009 for an award ceremony, and their introductory videos made at this time are also posted below.

Namita Kohli , India

Namita Kohli is a 26-year-old Delhi-based correspondent with The Hindustan Times newspaper, one of the two leading English dailies in India. She reports on issues of development, particularly concerning women and child rights in the country. Her interest subjects lie in the remotest and most neglected corners of the country. Early this year, she completed a fellowship in the state of Rajasthan in India, where she was researching and reporting exclusively on the issue of child marriages, sexuality education and young people's reproductive rights. She is a post graduate in journalism from the Delhi University, and has been a print journalist for four years now.

Kanina Foss, South Africa

Kanina Foss is a senior reporter with The Star, a daily newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa. She started her journalistic career working as a community newspaper reporter in her home town, Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape province. She has been with The Star for two years, and her responsibilities involve covering daily news events and writing analysis pieces on a wide range of subjects. She enjoys being a journalist in South Africa because of the diversity of the country. She hopes to be able to continue telling the stories that make a difference to the way people perceive each other.

Tatiana Velásquez Archibold, Columbia

Tatiana Velásquez Archibold is a young journalist who during almost four years worked both as intern and employee covering educational, security and social problems in the marginal zones of her city remarking the lost rights of those people. As journalist from El Heraldo, the Barranquilla’s oldest and biggest newspaper, she saw very close the ‘large social gap’ that both included the opportunities young people don’t have to change their lives to others developed, and the unsatisfactory basic needs which blacken their optimistic point of view about life. Through the Educational section she managed, one of the most successful goals she archived was to generate among the local and national context a wide range discussion about the importance of giving children a quality education to turn their lives around. As a result of this, Agencia Pandi gave her the Children’s Rights Friendly Journalist Award in April, 2008. Currently Tatiana is improving her English skills through an Intensive English Immersion in the University of Delaware for nine months that began in October 2008 and finished last summer. Tatiana has a B.A. in Social Communication and Journalism from the Universidad Autónoma del Caribe in Barranquilla. Also, she completed a postgraduate program in Politic and Economic Studies at Universidad del Norte, and she is coursing by Internet a B.A in Spanish Literature Studies with the Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga.

Nick Okoth Oluoch, Kenya

My name is Nick Oluoch, I am a children's issues writer with ‘The Standard’ a leading newspaper in the Eastern Africa region. I started writing for The Standard as an education writer back in 2004, by this time I was still in the University and was doubling as the Features Editor of the Kenyatta university Press publication. Then in 2006 just after completion of my Degree course, I was moved to Kisumu bureau, which is made up of three of the eight Kenyan provinces to be in charge of the children’s affair and Education issues. The region, which is made up of three of the eight Kenyan provinces, has over recent years experienced a rise in the number of cases of children abuse, from the Female Genital Mutilation among the Kuria community in Nyanza to lack of equality in schools and discrimination of girl child when it comes to education throughout the region. For three years now, I have been intensively involved in writing on these issues and trying to bring to the fore some of the issues affecting the children, which are never talked about in the media and hence continue. One of my most memorable achievements was when I managed to unearth a plot in which over three hundred girls were being forced to undergo forced FGM in Kuria district. After doing the story, the provincial administration together with a number of child rights groups were able to come in and rescue the children. I believe the fellowship will go along way in making me an all round writer even as I continue to specialize on the children’s issues, one of the areas still in dire need for coverage in the region.

Carmen Matos, Dominican Republic

I was born in Santo Domingo. I am a journalist working for HOY daily newspaper and I cover the education system since February 2007. Because of the poor physical conditions of our schools my work is focused on raising awareness of the importance of assuring a good teaching-learning environment and also putting teachers and students necessities on the national agenda. My work also involves getting feedback from the national education authorities and organizations working on the field and making sure that they will address the issues portrayed on my stories. I have to talk to students from all ages and to teachers on a regular basis to lears about their concerns on education issues and making sure I give them a voice is my main priority and my line of work.

Erick Ndungu Wamanji, Kenya

I have been working with the The Standard Group as Features and Special Reports Writer (correspondent) since 2003. This post combines photojournalism and writing.  My duties include identifying topical feature story ideas, researching and writing in informative and professionally acceptable standards. For these stories I also take photographs that would best illustrate the concept as much as captivate the reader. I Special Correspondent most magazine including, Society, Twinkle, Panorama, Big Issue, Instinct, Home & Away, Education, Wednesday Woman among many others.  I believe in journalism as a driver of change. Therefore, this training will provide me a competitive edge in my choice of stories and even the right angle. I also hope to rise an editor of a children’s or family magazine. This way, my contribution to matters of family and children would significantly improve. I’m so glad that my newspaper is open to ideas and allows writers a free hand in whatever they do so long as it is professional.