PRESS STATEMENT
5th March 2007
‘Just News’ - Innovative news-making competition engages students with Catholic Social Teaching
The Plater Trust working with the Catholic Education Service is offering students the chance to create a newspaper in real time. Prizes in this new competition will enable winning schools to help educate and empower young people in their communities in Sierra Leone and Liberia, West Africa.
“Just News” encourages students in Catholic schools and colleges to investigate themes of social justice, peace and development as well as reporting the main news of the day. Working in conjunction with the competition Newsday, which has been run by the Times Educational Supplement for almost 20 years, Just News enables students to get a sense of the newsroom dynamic and will inspire budding journalists who otherwise might not have the chance to experience news-making.
Oona Stannard, Chief Executive and Director of the CES said: ‘By choosing themes such as living simply, energy and nuclear power, recycling of waste, and community diversity, the competition encourages young people to develop their critical thinking about a range of current issues, to link them to the Church’s Social Teaching, and to write about them for their newspaper’s readership.
The Plater Trustees gave the idea of Just News the go-ahead as a way of sustaining Fr Charles Plater’s visionary promotion of Catholic Social Teaching while they await the report of the Steering Committee set up to advise them on the next steps for the Trust. Danny Curtin, Chair of the Young Christian Workers and a member of the Steering Committee, said he was ‘delighted’ that the Committee was able to use a small amount of the ring-fenced fund to encourage young people to examine their commitment to justice, development and peace, at very little cost. He noted that the experience and support of Newsday had been crucial to the launch of Just News.
Winners in each of the three age categories will receive £1,000 for their school or college to donate specifically to support CAFOD's work with young people in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and £250 for the school to use for a purpose related to Catholic Social Teaching. The runners-up in each category will receive £500 and £125 for the same uses and all prize winners will receive a plaque for their school. An awards ceremony will take place at the House of Commons in June 2007.
ENDS
For more information please contact Laura McCann t: 0207 901 4854
e: lmccann@cesew.org.uk w. www.cesew.org.uk.
Notes to Editors:
“Newsweek” is 12-16th March 2007; schools and colleges choose one day during this week to produce their newspaper.
The three age categories are 11-14, 14-16 and 16-19.
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