Final Evaluation Report

Charles Tembei, Cameroon Radio Television West (Bafoussam), Cameroon

There are experiences in life that no amount of textual or oral narration can capture perfectly. You just have to live them yourself. My participation in this 2007 One World Fellowship Programme is one of such kind of experience.

I have said elsewhere that what I have learnt during my two-week participation in this fellowship, I would never have been able to do that even if I spent two full semesters in a serious journalism school.

Summarily speaking, we visited and talked to the key players in the broadcast media industry in the UK. Some of them we met at broadcasting houses like BBC World, BBC Television Centre, Sky News, Current TV, Channel 4, ITN, Electric Airwaves, LBC Radio and Al Jazeera English.

Others were people involved in media training like the Thomson Foundation, the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford, and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association; those involved in regulation issues, like the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and OFCOM, including the central role of audiences in all that we do as journalists, like we got  from our introduction to BBC Audience Research.

This gave us an insight into the complexities of the organisation, structure and functioning of these media houses, and the other institutions that relate with them. But it did also offer us the opportunity to share ideas with some of these key players as we also explained to them the context in which the media is developing in our respective countries. A typical example of this kind of fulfilling and enriching exchange was our meeting with the Reuters Fellows at Oxford.

It has been a wonderfully rich experience for me, one that is going to completely change the way I will henceforth do my work back home. My short sojourn in London and participation in this very intense 2-week programme has enabled me to observe, with admiration, the strong work ethic of the people here. They are so committed to doing their work well, and to a general culture of excellence. 

I also saw the same high level of commitment, passion and professionalism in the small staff at One World Broadcasting Trust, and their Partners, who made all this happen. The One World Fellowships is a wonderful initiative and a big effort in building bridges across cultures. These bridges could be strengthened by designing a mechanism to help all One World fellows, past and present, to stay connected to each other and continue the north-south dialogue for a more peaceful and better world.

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