10 years back in 2011, I started my online news media (AO News) and it was just a local one, catering only Addu City, Maldives with a population of around 35,000. But in April 2020, we started our news media channel (AO channel) on social media platforms and launched our first digital studio in the city with our local dialect. And it was the very first newsroom in South Province providing the youth with a wonderful opportunity to fulfil their dream of becoming a TV presenter.
I was working as a local language teacher since 1995 and did my education in Language, Literature and Journalism. With my experiences in journalism and a hard-working team, in December 2020, we managed to establish our media from local to regional and came back stronger than ever.
One of the major challenges we faced in 2020 was financial support. As a media, our main income source is from our sponsors which are from different types of businesses. Due to the economic crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic, some of our sponsors have cut off their funding and some deducted from the previous amount. As a result, we were unable to pay our staffs and were not able to cover the daily expenses as well. Financially, 2020 was one of the toughest years we ever faced.
However, in this difficult situation, I got full support from my husband and our colleges. we together manage to survive those challenges. Therefore, I would like to thank him and the team members for this. with their support I’ve started conducting training programs and been travelling from island to island along with our NGO SCEAM team. We have trained more than 100 youths of the country and gained many enthusiastic interns willing to work with us. With so many challenges and barriers ahead of us we still managed to make 2020 a successful year!
The year 2021 would be the year we will be celebrating our media’s 10th anniversary. For this year our main goal is to establish fully equipped digital studios in each and every atoll of the south region and start broadcasting as a regional media with our own local dialects. We also plan to establish our journalism school and conduct various media-related training programs from the school affiliating with major journalism schools from outside the country.
– Written by Shim Ahmed
