
Funmilayo Ogundare
The need for female journalists to stay on top of their game in career and business using the new media platforms spurred Funmilayo Ogundare, who currently heads the education desk in ThisDay Newspapers, to organise a seminar tagged “Harnessing New Media Tools for Effective News Reporting in the Digital Age”. The one-day training, which was facilitated by two resource persons and a representative of a management staff at THISDAY, saw to the enlightenment of participants on the various opportunities embedded in new media and how it can be maximised. As a result, the participants made effort to improve and update their profile and social media network, even as they avowed to begin to use it to gather, analyse and disseminate news.
In her story project titled “Reintegrating the Girl-Child into the School System”, Funmi Ogundare delved into the issue of out-of-school girls. The story revealed that rape and stigmatisation, poverty, early marriage, ethnicity, as well as lack of security and safety measures in schools were associated with girl-child education. Funmi used her story as a call to action for parents as well as the government to ensure that girl-child education is taken seriously, by consciously reintegrating girls who are out of school into the school system.