The super prize of the All-Ukrainian competition called I Am A Journalist – a laptop from the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU )– was presented by NUJU President Sergiy Tomilenko to Ilona Datskova, a pupil of the People’s Art Collective, Young Journalist press club of the Khmelnytskyi Palace of Children and Youth Creativity.
The synergy of youth and beauty, creativity and unity filled the space of the Central Office of the NUJU during the awarding of the winners of the All-Ukrainian competition of student and student creative works I Am A Journalist. Talented students and student youth from all regions of Ukraine gathered in the NUJU conference hall. It is enough to name – the Kharkiv Region, Donetsk Region, Zakarpattia Region, Volyn Region, Sumy Region, Kherson Region, and many others.
The organizer of the competition, Vitalii Holubev, the secretary of the NUJU and founder of the School of Universal Journalism, began the event with touching lines from the work of Oksana Dyka, a student of the Markiyan Shashkevych Brody Professional Pedagogical College from the Lviv Region.
Before the award ceremony, the participants in the gathering honored with a minute of silence all those whose lives were taken by the full-scale invasion of the russian federation into Ukraine.
The competition includes three formats of works – article, photo, and video. Participants shared stories about people who inspire them, about circumstances that give them strength to hold on. The essay My Story told amazing stories of their destinies and how the war changed their lives and those of their relatives. In partnership with the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, this year, a special nomination, Reliable Agrarian Rear, was launched about the effective work of agricultural producers, thanks to which the state is one of the world’s guarantors of food security.
Many works came from internally displaced persons and children whose relatives were taken away by the war, as well as from representatives from front-line regions, more than 100 from the Kharkiv Region alone.
Sergiy Tomilenko drew attention to the photo works presented in the NUJU office, which have been demonstrated abroad more than once. The authors are well-known journalists, they show and record the truth of the war. Thereby confirming how important and risky the work of media workers is.
The war showed the phenomenon of the printed press in the front-line territories, their renaissance, because there were simply no other sources of information there due to enemy shelling and damage to the infrastructure. Sergiy Tomilenko said this based on his own experience. After all, not so long ago, the President of the NUJU returned from a working trip, during which, among other cities, he visited the front-line Orikhiv of the Zaporizhzhia Region. The fighting there is taking place only three kilometers from the city, in which people still live in basements, without a stable electricity supply since 2022. And they need not only humanitarian aid but also truthful information in contrast to russian propaganda.
The NUJU supported the initial activities of 32 front-line newspapers, including those from those regions from which the competition participants came to the capital. The head of the NUJU gave examples of support for journalists in Sumy, Kharkiv, and other regions.
The moment when Sergiy Tomilenko presented Ilona Datskova with a laptop from the NUJU was extremely touching.
Journalists are important!
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