Emad Abdel Aziz Hussein, a young man from the city of Amuda, headed to Qamishli after hearing about launching a media training center, with the intention to get a job, following the spread of radio and television channels and the intense tendency to develop the media field.
Since boyhood, Emad had always developed a desire to study media, as he tells Enab Baladi, so he enrolled in the “Sterva” Center, which was established in mid-January 2018, after which it started to offer training opportunities, the last of which is the radio and television training course, which continues through out March.
Emad believes that “the Center is qualified and it has resources and tools that help to develop it;” it also contains a distinct educational staff, explaining that, early this month, he completed a course in preparing and presenting a journalistic report, “we received a lot of information, and, currently, I am working to sharpen my skills in terms of presenting radio and television news.”
The Center is the second in the city of Qamishli, after the first which was constructed in October 2016, according to Nehayat Ahmad, the Director of the “Sterva” Center, who, in his interview with Enab Baladi, pointed out that the center contains a number of new specialties. “The teaching process in the center has a wider scope; we have contracted with specialists from the area following a different method, according to an innovative central system.”
“Sterva” Center presents workshops in the fields of radio, sound engineering, and radio advertisement training; each of these workshops is a weeklong, consisting of 14 training hours. As a fee, the trainees pay about 35 dollars only, according to the Center’s Administration’s estimates.
Ahamd views the number of the trainees as yet small, attributing this to the following reason: “the idea is still new in the area; but the number increased in the new Center if compared with the last year’s numbers.”
The new Center conducted three workshops since its establishment; the last of which is currently running, with the supervision of Fareed Edward, a journalist based in the city of Qamishli and a graduate of the Media Department in Damascus University.
Edward tells Enab Baladi that he teaches materials in various fields, the most prominent of which are: writing and editing news, video reports, television and radio presentation and dialogue management, describing the experience as novel, for it was conducted in a limited manner prior to 2011.
According to the trainer, most of the people enrolling in the center are amateurs not academicians, explaining that, “some of the trainees have simple qualifications, that we are trying to develop, and others who are already working in the field of media, however need to sharpen their skills.”
Suaad Abdha, 22 years old, attends the radio presentation course. She tells Enab Baladi that she is seeking to learn and work as a radio presenter, after understanding the field on a larger scale, pointing out that she will look for a job after completing the training workshop.
The young woman, Haivi Ibrahim, hopes to develop in the field of televised media, saying that “the center is integrated in terms of devices and staff; I hope to own the strength to face the camera at the end of the training course and the ability to indulge in the media industry.”