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Press Releases
BBC NewsMaker competition announces Jordanian winners
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Two young Jordanian women have been given the opportunity to broadcast to the BBC's 42-million English-language listeners.
As winners of the young journalism competition, BBC NewsMaker, Lina Al-Ejeilat, 24, and Sarah Albadry, 21, will make and broadcast their programmes with BBC news journalists in the coming weeks. In addition, they win laptop computers.
Their entries were chosen from among hundreds of non-professional English-speaking journalists aged 20 to 30-years-old.
The judges were singer, actress and TV presenter, Rania Kurdi, BBC's special correspondent and presenter Lyse Doucet, and Editor of BBC World Service News and Current Affairs, Liliane Landor.
Lina Al-Ejeilat, a student trainer for a telecoms company, explores a "truly Ammani music" that is distinct from both the strong influence of the West, and Arab musical traditions. Lina believes this music "is what many young Jordanians are turning to as they struggle to find a cultural identity of their own."
Sarah Albadry tells the BBC her own story – of a high-flying medical student from Baghdad who fled Iraq to settle in Jordan after her father was kidnapped. She discovers that Jordan's universities don't have enough places to accommodate everybody, so she's emailing her friends in Baghdad for lecture notes, struggling to keep her studies going.
BBC NewsMaker also awarded MP3 players to five runners-up:
- Maram Hamam on child labour;
- Manar Daghlas on Jordanian teenagers preoccupied with celebrity culture;
- Mohamed Nasser Eddin on the identity crisis of a Palestinian student in no-man's land;
- Haitham Ja'far on young managers battling with bureaucracy;
- Lina Samawi uncovering the secrets of the ancient city of Abila.
Rania Kurdi said: "There was an exciting variety of subjects, and the winners came from a range of backgrounds. The entries showed that many young Jordanians are deeply concerned about issues that affect society as a whole, and are searching to find a unique identity for themselves."
Agreeing that there has been "a rich seam of entries from young people living in Jordan", Lyse Doucet added: "They've given us an extraordinary picture of this next generation in a country squeezed between conflicts in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, a place where young people are trying to forge their own identity."
Liliane Landor said: "The BBC's NewsMaker competition has given us fascinating insights into what young people in Jordan are thinking. The winners have come up with challenging and exciting stories, and will tell them to our 42-million English-language listeners in their own words, with a fresh and engaging voice."
The BBC's English output is available in Jordan online on bbcnews.com.
BBC World Service
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