TROC - Young people speak out in Albania
by Chris Schuepp TROC means „Speak Out“ in Albanian. For 5 years now, teenagers from all over the country have been producing a weekly TV show, broadcast on TVSh, the national public TV station. But now they want to go a step further – and turn TROC into a regional project. UNICEF has trained the teenagers in reporting on children’s issues and supplied 11 bureaus for young reporters with the technical equipment. TROC has developed into one of the most successful programs in Albania and enjoys a large audience when it is broadcast every Saturday at 6 PM. The young people’s dedication and investigative spirit has elevated children’s issues to the headlines and has generated a number of changes in the reporters’ communities. Now the young reporters traveled to the neighboring Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the UN Administered Province of Kosovo. Their mission: Finding partners for a regional edition of TROC.
In Skopje, they met with a group called Cre8tive 8. The young filmmakers are supported by the British Council and won a UNICEF Voices of Youth film competition in 2005. As a possible outlet for the regional programme, AL-SAT, an Albanian satellite TV channel, was contacted. First plans were being made to cooperate with the Macedonian counterparts before the TROC team left for Kosovo. Here, they met with a youth NGO called “Bla Bla Café”. The young people are based in a Serbian enclave, but they run a multi-ethnic project that creates radio programs in Serbian, Albanian and the Roma language and gets broadcast on more than 40 radio stations throughout Kosovo. Facilitated by the UNICEF office in Prishtina, the TROC reporters then met with youngsters who work with RTK, the public TV channel in Kosovo. There were no language problems, as the large majority of the population in Kosovo is ethnic Albanians - a fact that will be important in the future cooperation between the TROC reporters and their peers in the neighboring country. Back in Tirana, Albania, the TROC team now “only” has to “connect the dots” to turn their successful TV program into an initiative that will make a difference for young people throughout the whole region. Chris Schuepp accompanied the TROC team to Skopje and Prishtina.
TROC reporters "on the road"
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