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South Shields Kids Lead The Way At St.James’ Park

11 years ago
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Children from year 5 at Stanhope Primary School in South Shields, were the lucky ones invited to go to St.James’ Park and be journalists for the day.

The event was organised by Show Racism the Red Card (SRTRC) with the help of Newcastle United.

The students had workshops and a tour of the ground, as well as viewing  a DVD and then the highlight of the day, posing their questions to SRTRC’s (to see more on the excellent work SRTRC do and how you can help, visit their website here) panel of ex and current footballer players on the subject of racism in the game or in society.

This annual event was slightly different this year, in that students were asked beforehand to prepare for the day and become a journalist.  The children were asked to research the topic of racism before they attended the event and use the whole day as furthering their research, making notes in their reporters pads and preparing some questions to put to the panel (introducing their newspaper name before asking their question as if it were a real press conference).

The panel consisted of ex-Newcastle players Olivier Bernard, John Anderson, Richard Offiong, plus Dean Gordon who played for Middlesbrough and Gary Bennett ex-Sunderland.

The two special guests were current NUFC players Massadio Haidara and Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa.

After the event they were asked to write their article to be judged by The Mag and a prize awarded to the winner. Here at The Mag we were proud to take up the challenge and it was a privilege to see the high standard of work by all of the budding journalists.

We were fortunate to have ex-NUFC defender and now radio pundit, John Anderson, to help with the judging.

John also does valuable work for Show Racism The Red Card but found it a tricky challenge to pick a winner from the entries, in fact there was such a high standard overall, it was really difficult just narrowing it down to four finalists!

Jointly, we eventually narrowed it down to four finalists and we have featured three of them so far here on the website (Read finalist [intlink id=”29639″ type=”post”]Kaia Howe\’s piece[/intlink], [intlink id=”29722″ type=”post”]Jeannys Bononge\’s article[/intlink]) and [intlink id=”29735″ type=”post”]Brendan Harwood\’s[/intlink]. The fourth finalist and winner(!) is featured below and is also included in the new issue of the magazine (on sale this weekend).

Thank you to all the students from Stanhope Primary School, who without exception produced excellent pieces of work.

Any of the four finalists could have won but John and myself eventually judged Samuel Al-Khazraji’s as just a nose ahead of the other three finalists; Jeannys Bononge, Brendan Harwood and Kaia Howe.

Well done to everybody who took part.
Mark Jensen

Breaking News Daily

By Samuel Al-Khazraji

Red Card For Racism

On Tuesday 16th April 2013, Stanhope Primary School and Kells Lane Primary School took part in Show Racism the Red Card at St.James’ Park, to learn about racism and how to deal with it.

The pupils were given an exclusive behind the scenes tour of the stadium and participated in workshops to educate the children on racism. They learned the four ways of racism – culture, skin colour, nationality and religion.

Later in the day the children watched a promotional film to raise awareness of racism. The film featured people like Ryan Giggs and Gareth Bale telling the players and the youngsters their own experiences.

A beneficial part of the day was when the pupils got the opportunity to ask questions to current and ex football players who had experienced racism themselves, both on and off the field, and how it had affected their family members.

Richard Offiong quoted, “I felt scared when they were making monkey chants at me.”

Dean Gordon also quoted, “I was racially abused via email and they tracked the man down to Cyprus.”

Overall the Show Racism the Red Card team had a fantastic day at St.James’ Park, let’s hope it is as successful next time.

Robbie Gateshill from Stanhope Primary quoted, “I have learned a lot about racism”.

Watch video footage of the Show Racism The Red Card event at St.James’ Park below.

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/hox5xDsX2no” rel=”0″ showinfo=”0″]

New issue of our magazine now on sale in all Tyneside newsagents featuring the winning entry, or order now online for only £3 (plus postage) for Worldwide delivery straight to your door, or why not start a subscription – prices from only £23.

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