BRADES, Montserrat – Lana McDonald and Theodore Phillip are representing Montserrat at a two-day Young TV Producers workshop ongoing in Antigua to learn about creating top-quality programming on HIV.
Mitzi Allen of HAMA TV & Productions who is one of the instructors for the course requested that McDonald and Phillip attend as they showed great promise from the in-house training programmes done with the Broadcasting Division and ZJB Radio Montserrat in 2011 and January 2012.
“I’m extremely proud of the Montserrat team,” Allen said. The two were selected to participate along with eight other young Caribbean TV producers in the hands-on workshop sponsored by the Caribbean Broadcast Media Partnership on HIV/AIDS (CBMP) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
The UNESCO Kingston Cluster Office for the Caribbean is providing financial support for three training workshops to be held in Antigua, Jamaica and St. Maarten. The objective is to develop the capacities of 30 Young Caribbean television producers in the making of high quality TV programmes, enable their ability to be part of an international network of TV professionals engaged in HIV prevention and increase the number of credible programmes for license-free exchange worldwide.
Ten young producers from Antigua, Barbuda, Dominica, Montserrat and St. Lucia are at the workshop among their peers from the Caribbean who are expected to produce programmes on priority issues in HIV prevention including multiple concurrent partnerships, low levels of condom use, gender-based violence, masculinities and homophobia.
UNESCO’s immediate importance is to build the capacity of these 30 young television producers from 16 countries to produce 30 high quality TV documentaries which could be used for programme exchange with other broadcasters of the world through worldwide network which operates from UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.
CBMP Executive Director Dr. Allyson Leacock lauded UNESCO for its continued efforts to effectively respond to HIV and AIDS in the Caribbean region and its programme goals that are perfectly aligned with CBMP’s core activities. This workshop strengthens UNESCO’s expanded partnership with the CBMP.

“Informed and highly trained media professionals are an essential element in the Caribbean response to HIV and AIDS. We are therefore very pleased that UNESCO has once again demonstrated their commitment to the Caribbean response by expanding their partnership with the CBMP. These planned workshops, along with the CBMP/UNESCO Interactive training Tool which was launched in 2009, are effective strategies to ensuring that the region’s YV producers are equipped with the necessary tools to effect behaviour change with excellent programming as is currently done by CBMP’s 112 stations in 24 countries throughout the region ”, Dr. Leacock stated.
She also noted that at the end of this phase of the CBMP/UNESCO partnership, “the region will have a group of young TV producers who are capable of producing accurate, quality materials to complement the body of HIV work currently being produced in the region”.
UNESCO’s Director for the Kingston Cluster Office for the Caribbean, Dr. Kwame Boafo stated “The work of the CBMP is critical to making a difference in the region’s response. We at UNESCO have targeted young people in the region in much of our work and the LIVE UP Campaign’s focus on young people aligns well with UNESCO’s goals. Given the positive response to our Interactive Tool launched on World AIDS Day in 2009, we are very pleased to build on this work with the CBMP in 2012 and beyond”.
Under this current partnership for these workshops, these 30 young TV producers’ newly created content will also be added to the UNESCO Interactive tool on the CBMP’s www.iliveup.com website.
The workshop is being done in partnership with the Government of Antigua at the Grand Royal Antiguan Hotel.