Football for Friendship Young Participants became correspondents of international media

Moscow, June 3. Thirty two Young Journalists from Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America took part in the Seventh Season of the Gazprom International Children's Social Programme Football for Friendship. Girls and boys aged 12 worked together in the International Children's Press Center covering the final events of the programme which took place in Madrid from May 28 to June 2.

The aim of the format of the International Children's Press Center became to immerse the children in the professional environment of sports journalism. They worked in four main spheres: creating news, photo, and video content, posts for social media. Besides, they prepared materials for the annual Football for Friendship newspaper and participated in creating digests for the programme's official YouTube channel.

On May 30, the children covered the International Football for Friendship Forum, and on May 31 and June 1, they covered the events of the Football for Friendship World Championship, including the training with the most nationalities which received the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS® title.

Professionals from the world's leading media helped Young Journalists prepare for the work at the events. They conducted workshops for children at the International Friendship Camp. The representatives of TASS Russian News Agency taught children the basics of writing scripts for reports and video blogs and told about the peculiarities of the work in sports media. The reportes from News.ru (Russia), Sportwereld (The Netherlands) and Sportal (Bulgaria) taught Young Journalists how to work in the frame and the technique of conducting an interview with football players and sports managers.

This year, Young Journalists became partners of adult journalists of the leading international and national media for the very first time. Together with professionals from PAT (Bolivia), Karjalainen (Finland), BBC Match of the day magazine (UK), Obzor.lt (Lithuania), Nemzeti sport (Hungary) and Sjællandske Medier (Denmark) girls and boys created their first serious materials, which will be published in media. At the end of this work, Young Journalist from Saint Petersburg Rafel Zinoviev was offered an internship in the sports editorial office of the News.ru portal.

"It's important to help children of this age to develop their talents and show all the sides of the professions that they are interested in. The International Children's Press Center allowed Young Journalists to acquire new skills and use them in practice. The educational programme emphasized modern technologies and digital content: formats that are closer to kids than to adults. The skill of creating content for the digital space will become a great basis for starting a professional career. Football for Friendship is a unique programme. So many children will go back to their countries with new knowledge, ideas, and inspiration, with incredible working experience at a huge event and with the realization of the fact that the whole world is open for them," - says the Head of the Corporate Communications Department of the TASS Informational Agency, Elena Dzheglav.

"I dream of becoming a reporter and I treat this goal very seriously. The possibility to learn professional secrets from the best journalists of the world's leading media made me very happy. At the Camp I've learned many new things and it helped me to create new interesting materials about the events of Football for Friendship. There was so much going on here! I hope that I’ve managed to show the atmosphere of the event, although it seems impossible to convey it," - says a Young Journalist from Israel Aviv Chen.

For some of the Young Journalists covering the final events of the Seventh Season of Football for Friendship, it's not their first season, and they already have a vast experience of a reporter. Young Journalist from India Ananya Kamboj who wrote a book "My Journey from Mohali to Saint Petersburg" about her participation in the Fifth Season of Football for Friendship, became the Chief Editor of the Football for Friendship newspaper.

Information

The International Children’s Social Programme Football for Friendship has been implemented by Gazprom since 2013. The key values promoted by the programme's participants are friendship, equality, fairness, health, peace, devotion, victory, traditions, and honour. Football for Friendship is supported by the UEFA, FIFA, International Olympic Committee, football federations of different countries, children’s international charity funds, famous athletes, and the leading football clubs of the world. For the previous seasons, the programme has brought more than 6 thousand participants together and acquired over 5 million followers including famous athletes, artists, and politicians.