By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
Children and Youth Awareness Forum (CYAF) has launched a creative competition on television for young people to express their ideas to tackle corruption. Organizers of the show say they will accept original and creative works in the form of music, art and poetry.
CYAF is collaborating with the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), the Africa Young Voices (AYV) Media Empire and the telecoms operator Africell to bring the National Anti-Corruption Creative competition. All four parties were present during a media launch of the show on Thursday at AYV, Tower Hill.
Entry for the show was immediately opened after the launch and will run until October 17th this year.
CYAF President, Anderson Lansana said this is a remarkable way to include young people in the fight against corruption.
“Corruption has a cost; the cost is social, economic and even moral,” Lansana said.
He described the initiative as “rebirth” that shows the country is now ready to tackle corruption by using the ideas of young people.
CYAF operates in Makeni, Port Loko, Bo and Kenema. Lansana said much of their work latterly has been focused on teaching young people on the moral cost of corruption.
The ACC boss, Francis Ben Kaifala, praised the initiative, saying it’s a fresh approach to bring on board the ideas of young people to fight corruption.
“I always say corruption will be dealt with if young people give a damn. That is why our work at the ACC is to tap into that constituency, because no matter what statistics you look at, the young people are always in the majority,” he said.
“We believe this creative competition will help in the fight against corruption,” Keifala added.
This talent show comes at the backdrop of a collaboration that AYV signed with ACC last week.
Chief Executive Officer of AYV, Anthony Navo Jnr, said they are excited to be hosting such a show.
“For us at the Africa Young Voices, this is a huge opportunity. We have the platform and it is good we are now using young people in the fight against corruption,” he said.
One of the leading mobile operators in the country, Africell, also said they will promote the show on all their branding platforms.
Navo said work to bring the show on television has been going on now for weeks behind the scenes.
Organizers say there will be three categories: Spoken Word, which will involve poetry; Painting; and a video category which will require young people to perform or display any talent within three minutes.
When entries close, judges will screen all the works on television and shortlist the best 15 works. This will then be trimmed to three works for the finals in December this year.
The ultimate winner will receive Le50 million as star prize.
Director of Public Education and External Outreach, Patrick Sandy, said during the launch of the program that some of the works will be used in public education materials about corruption.
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