The Manana Center today encouraged its young correspondents to join Armenia\u2019s network of journalists.<\/p>\n
The teenagers received awards for writing the best village stories, doing a series of the best landscapes, reflecting the reality of border villages, writing the best sentimental stories and a number of other work, which were published on the website 17.am.<\/p>\n
The Manana Center implements the program \u201cFostering Young People\u2019s Freedom of Expression Through Citizen Journalism,\u201d which aims to develop youth citizen journalism in Armenia, with funding from the EU.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin the scope of the program, journalism, photography, and filmmaking workshops, seminars, and media camps have been organized for the hundreds of youth in the regions (aged 14\u201324), who write stories, take photos, and make films on different topics,\u201d says the center\u2019s president, Ruzanna Baghdasaryan.<\/p>\n
According to her, 17.am is a precious website for not only them, but also the young correspondents because \u201cit unites everyone and provides the opportunity to have their voices heard.\u201d<\/p>\n
The site is a platform for self-expression also for 17-year-old reporter Vahe Stepanyan from the village of Malishka in Vayots Dzor marz<\/em> (province), who was recognized as the best essayist.<\/p>\n He says he writes essays the best, if he doesn\u2019t postpone his wish to write, of course. \u201cBefore becoming a student at Manana, I would keep a journal and write in it when I wanted, but now I try not to leave the task till tomorrow,\u201d says Vahe.<\/p>\n He likes to write on different topics, as he says, about real and not abstract things. He writes about time the most and believes that the result is interesting. His experience forces him to think about getting into journalism in the future, though he wants to study in the information security department.<\/p>\n Meri Muradyan, who received an award for writing the best village stories, is one of the center\u2019s younger students. Fourteen-year-old Meri is from Koghb village in Tavush marz<\/em>, who through Manana has acquired many friends from Armenia\u2019s various provinces. Besides the knowledge she gained, she considers her friends her greatest achievement.<\/p>\n The 14-year-old reporter\u2019s stories are mainly about her village; more specifically, about the village\u2019s past, which reached her through grandmothers and grandfathers.<\/p>\n \u201cI try to gather them and present them to the public. Why about the past? Because many appreciate the present, not knowing about their past or their ancestors. I thought to write down those stories and present them to the public in language that\u2019s accessible,\u201d says Meri, who aims to make their village more recognizable through such stories.<\/p>\n Seventeen-year-old Seryozha Arakelyan, from Baghanis village in Tavush marz<\/em>, received an award for reflecting the reality of and taking interesting photos of border villages.<\/p>\n He considers himself foremost a painter: he mainly paints portraits and gifts them to his friends and those who want them. In fact, he didn\u2019t come to the awards ceremony empty-handed: he brought 23 portraits to give as gifts to the friends he acquired through 17.am.<\/p>\n Photography is his second hobby: though he doesn\u2019t have a camera, he tries to capture his favorite shot using his phone. He likes to photograph the movement of people, daily village life, everything, but different from other photographs. \u201cI\u2019m from the border village of Baghanis, but that doesn\u2019t mean that there is shooting there everyday, that the situation is tense, and that has to show up in the photos. On the contrary, I\u2019ve photographed a furnace, heat, children studying covered in a blanket, and nothing is in their way.\u201d<\/p>\n He says that with his photographs he tries to make many people recognizable \u2014 and, why not, it\u2019s also an opportunity for him to be recognized. He gets inspired from this and begins to take photography and journalism more seriously.<\/p>\n His greatest achievement is also his friends, whom he communicates with through Facebook, and when they meet in person, he dreams of stopping time and prolonging the warm friendly atmosphere.<\/p>\n The Manana Center is the main hero of this atmosphere. The center engages in the media education of children, teens, and young adults. Operating in the center are journalism, photojournalism, cinema, and animation studios, whose students\u2019 works have won numerous awards at prestigious international awards ceremonies and have been exhibited and published in many countries.<\/p>\n Anahit Danielyan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Manana Center today encouraged its young correspondents to join Armenia\u2019s network of journalists. The teenagers received awards for writing the best village stories, doing a series of the best landscapes, reflecting the reality of border villages, writing the best sentimental stories and a number of other work, which were published on the website 17.am. Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsroom","author_posts-anahit-danielyan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}