Nairobi Community Media House celebrates 100th African Slum Journal
In the spring of 2011 a group of young African reporters from the slums in Nairobi, Kenya supported by the Voices of Africa Media Foundation (VoAMF) established their own media company. Next month, four years after the event, the Nairobi Community Media House (NCMH) is about to publish the one hundredth episode of the African Slum Journal! These journals bring fascinating and surprising real life stories from the slums to a local and international audience, giving these slums a voice. The 100th episode will be out on May 4.
Every two weeks short videos – African Slum Journals – bring both sad and inspiring stories from the slums. These stories show the slums as they are. Inside out! Over the last four years a diversity of subjects has been covered, ranging from fashion, abortion, recycling, education, and raising children to music, art, drugs, HIV, transportation, and so on.
Pim de Wit, managing director of VoAMF: "Over the past few years the journals have presented us with an authentic picture of life and survival in the slums. A weak media sector gives room to corruption. By giving the slums a voice the local media sector is strengthened, not by outsiders but by the residents of the slum communities themselves. Today NCMH employs ten reporters. Since the start they have been receiving a salary that allowed them to build a life for themselves and their families. And so, the project has become sustainable and at the same time we gained a better understanding of what it is to live in a slum."
In 2013 and 2014 the NCMH managed to make a small profit and this year the profit must grow in order for the NCMH to become truly independent. At this moment the VoAMF holds 37% of the shares of NCMH Limited. The other 63% is owned by the employees. Before VoAMF transfers all of its shares, NCMH should have become a financially healthy company.
Nairobi Community Media House will continue to use the African Slum Journal platform to bring out many more stories. NGO's now have the opportunity to have their projects covered in a special slum journal. For this purpose a separate partnership program has been developed.