Ini Victoria John-Mekwa

The producer of ‘Big Story’ on Channels Television, Ini Victoria John-Mekwa, observed that the media seemed not to favour female resource persons. For this reason, her leadership project concentrated on populating newsrooms with more female resource persons. Her leadership project which spanned a period of three weeks featured a report on the poor representation of women in the legislature. Also, she was able to influence the inclusion of females on the Vox Pop Page of the Punch Newspaper, which until then had prominently featured only male resource persons. She also noted that producers in her newsroom now intentionally involve female resource persons in their programmes.

Ini did a story on a young mother of two who is a victim of domestic violence. The story focuses on the trend of young girls who become unplanned mothers and the attendant consequences of unplanned motherhood. In the story, domestic violence and teenage pregnancy were two pertinent gender issues highlighted. Worthy of note is the fact that the young mother in the story was to be empowered to start a trade, as the story got the attention of non- governmental agencies, who promised to take the matter up amidst other promises.