Over the weekend at a dinner held at the Sierra Light House Aberdeen, staff and friends of Awoko Newspaper bided farewell to Jessica Mc Darmid a Journalist for Human Rights (JHR) trainer.
Jessica has been working with Awoko Newspaper for over ten months as a trainer on human rights reporting thereby exposing the reporters to different human rights issues in the country.
Kelvin Lewis Managing Editor of Awoko Newspaper at the dinner said “we will be missing her a lot when she goes or not. This is just a small way of saying thanks to her. She has been very helpful to staff of the Newspaper, and we appreciate all the work she did.”
The Managing Editor maintained that working with Jessica has been very productive as she was very instrumental in assisting reporters in investigating and writing human rights stories.
In handing over a gift plaque specially designed for her on behalf of Awoko along with an African dress, Betty Milton senior reporter of Awoko Newspaper said working with Jessica has helped them know about human right issues, how to investigate them and eventually report them.
She assured the JHR trainer that “we will continue in her footprint and we will not lose track of your teachings. We have learnt a lot from the pushing and running after stories with you. We will definitely miss you, but we hope that you come again to complete the work you started and to cover the November 27 presidential elections.”
After receiving the gifts Jessica Mc Darmid expressed her appreciation to all the staff of Awoko Newspaper saying “it has been one of the best experience of my life, Awoko is a wonderful Newspaper with very inspiring, kindest, smartest staff. And I never regretted a single day that I worked there.”
She said that journalism in Sierra Leone is faced with enormous challenges one of which is the condition of service of the staff as most Newspaper staff go without salary “and this impacts on the quality of work they do.”
She added that accessing information is another challenge as “facts” are very important in writing stories but that the journalists do an incredible job in the face of all of these obstacles “what they do is interesting especially coming to elections.”
She said that the country has been incredible especially the beaches “the country is peaceful most of the time with its distinct villages and diversified places to visit.”
About JHR Jessica said working with them has been interesting and exciting as one has to put a “lot of energy to collect stuff.”
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