By Katie Meyer

For the past two days, unbeknownst to many students and faculty, Rose Hill has played host to a delegation of 15 young journalists, aged 22 to 35, from various developing countries around the world. The group came as a part of a United Nations initiative called the Reham Al Farra Memorial Journalists Fellowship Programme, which started in 1980 as a way of developing fellowships for journalists and promoting the work of the UN in the developing world. Named for a young staff member who was killed in the 2003 bombings of the UN building in Baghdad, the four-week program aims to host journalists from every country viewed as “developing.”

Each year, only one journalist from each chosen country is admitted. This year’s 15 participants hail from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Colombia, Ethiopia, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, the Republic of Moldova, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda and Vietnam, all of which are members of the 168 countries that the UN considers to be “developing.”

This year’s participants join 521 journalists and broadcasters who the program has hosted in years past. According to Zvi Muskal, a UN worker who has been the program’s coordinator for the past five years, each country is invited approximately every eight years.

The participants have a chance to experience New York City culture, as well as participate in various programs and seminars around the city

The visit to Fordham came in the second week of the program and serves as an instructional time for the journalists. Over the two-day period, a number of faculty members from Fordham’s communications and media department give presentations to the visitors on everything from humanitarian crises, to reporting on religion in secular media, to the geopolitics of digital communication.

The Fordham-hosted portion of the program has been happening for “seven or eight years,” according to the longtime coordinator Robin Andersen. Andersen explained that the idea for holding the program at Fordham came after someone from the UN heard her speak at an event and invited her to submit a bid for the two-day seminars, which she did.

“It was an enormous amount of paperwork to become a ‘vendor’ for the UN, so at first, they paid us,” Andersen said. “Then, about four years ago, I proposed to Dean Latham that we establish a different kind of partnership with the UN…we offer them this two-day program, and they don’t charge our students who visit the UN the entrance fee, and don’t charge students in our International Communications class the fee for the briefings they are given at the UN.”

Zvi Muskal, who has been the UN coordinator of the program for the last five years, hopes that when these journalists return to their home countries, “they are able to write more. More accurately, with balance, and…with better understanding of the work of the UN.”

Muskal said that the process for applying to such a selective program is highly selective.

“Each year, I select the countries who I invite to submit nominees to the program. Of course I invite more countries than actually I need, because of course there are many countries in which the media is in very bad shape, in a very bad situation, and they don’t have candidates,” he said. “I send letters to those [approved] countries’ United Nations information centers and I ask them to advertise in the local media…after candidates fill out the proper paperwork, I interview them on the phone and make sure they speak adequate English and have social skills, and I ask for a few examples of their work related to the UN. They have to be interested in the UN.”

Muskal then has his pick of qualified journalists from all over the world.

“The UN is very careful to pick highly qualified and promising journalists,” Andersen said. “The attendees [are balanced] in terms of media, gender and global region.”

In past years there have been issues with participants taking advantage of the program. One man even tried to gain asylum while in New York. The journalists attending this year, though, have been a good group, according to Muskal.

Irene Namyalo, a TV news reporter from Uganda, said she has had a very good experience so far. Never having been in New York before, she marvels at the differences between the city and her home country.

“Everything is so beautiful,” she said. “It is very nice, we have learned a lot. I got to know how New York covers its stories, and we can use these skills we’ve got now, use them in our own countries, and we can look at news with a different perception.”

Namyalo was recomended for the program after covering several stories with the UN agencies in rural areas.

“Zvi [Muskal] took me through an interview and, after that interview, I was selected for my country,” she said. “He told me the competition was tight. All of us were good, but I think somehow I got in.”

She was impressed with the Fordham professors she had met, particularly with their speaking styles.

“I like the way they present themselves,” she said. “They express themselves so well, and they make sure everyone has got something they can take back home.”

Babele Some, the representative from Burkina Faso, West Africa, who specializes in radio, has also found the experience valuable thus far. He has been working as a journalist for several years, and his office works with several UN organizations covering countries like Mali and Chad. He heard about the program through coworkers, applied and was selected. Like Namyalo, he has never been to a city like New York.

“New York is a bigger city, and difficult to be in for the first time. It’s not easy to know where you are going. But it is a good place, I think,” Some said. “I’ve learned a lot through this program from the different presentations from different departments of the UN. I want to strengthen my knowledge.”

Some plans to continue writing to the UN about his country in order to promote its programs, specifically concerning refugees in Mali.

For their part, the Fordham professors who have been involved with the program have enjoyed having the chance to interact with these foreign journalists.

“My experience has been great,” said communication professor Kimberly Casteline, who was involved for the second year in a row and presented on religious reporting in the US. “The journalists are very excited to be here and ask lot of great questions, and some of them even keep in touch after they return to their home countries.”

Gregory Donovan, a communications professor in his first semester at Fordham, agreed, and said that presenting to the journalists is very different from teaching a normal class of students.

“These are people who are working professionals,” he said. “It was more of a dialogue with people who are already experts in their own fields, their own trades. It was like a round table discussion, and it was really exciting. They were great people.”

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Katie Meyer is the News Editor for The Fordham Ram.