2010 Tony Manicaros Award Goes to...

The annual Tony Manicaros Award is a grant award of up to $1,500 offered by the NEMBC in memory of Tony Manicaros. The award is open to all ethnic and multicultural broadcasters at community stations in Australia and is granted to fund an original project idea to develop ethnic and multicultural community broadcasting in Australia.

The Tony Manicaros Award is given to commemorate and celebrate Tony Manicaros’s work for ethnic community broadcasting on a station, state and national basis. Full-time ethnic community radio stations, ethnic broadcasters’ ‘umbrella’ groups and the Community Broadcasting Foundation have provided funding for the award.

For this year only a special award of $2,000 was on offer to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the NEMBC.

The award was announced during the NEMBC’s National Conference Gala Dinner in Canberra on the 6th of November 2010.

This year’s winner was Daniel Malouf, for his multicultural youth training program based at Radio 2XX Canberra. Daniel accepted the award along with Malual and Bul, two hosts of 2XX’s Multicultural Youth Program who will play key roles in the project.

The NEMBC extends a warm congratulations to Daniel and the team and looks forward to hearing of the project’s success.

Daniel writes below about his project and the team’s reaction to news of the award.

Training Program for Canberra’s Multicultural Youth Wins the 2010 Tony Manicaros Award

In an article in the Autumn edition of the NEMBC newsletter, Saeed Saeed lamented an absence of political leadership over the past decade on multicultural integration in Australia, stating that we are now faced with “a generation of youth starved of effective leadership when it comes to tolerance…” In this context, it’s great to see the NEMBC awarding $2000 towards a project that will seek out Canberra’s next generation of ethnic broadcasters and unleash their talent, energy and unique perspectives onto the airwaves, in the process giving them leadership and communication skills to engage with the debate on what a multicultural Australia really means.

The project that the Tony Manicaros Award will be supporting is a multi-part training series aimed at engaging youth from migrant and refugee backgrounds in the Canberra community by offering them a pathway to radio stardom, or at least community radio. The training series will be open to 10-12 young people aged between 14 and 16 years old, and will be part led by current 2XX youth presenters Bul Kuol and Malual Aleer who will transfer their skills and experiences to their peers. It will provide training in interview skills, planning a show, editing and podcasting and technical training on radio panels. Training will include participating in a live-to-air broadcast and presentations by local youth leaders, radio personalities and role models from a multicultural background.

The outcome of the training will be to have several teams of young ethnic presenters hosting weekly shows on multicultural youth issues and to have some “youth correspondents” capable of producing pre-prepared features for uploading and airing on 2XX. At its base, the project recognises that these voices bring energy to the airwaves as well as vibrant insights into cultural and generational clashes that take place everyday in the lives of Australian youth.

Malual, 15, one of the hosts of the 2XX multicultural youth program, shared his views on what his peers can expect to gain from radio training and taking to the airwaves. “You’re a little nervous at first, but then it becomes more natural. We are able to share our point of view with a lot of people at once, and that is empowering.” Bul, a co-host, said “we have learnt skills such as communicating with people, learning how to explore issues, interviewing people, gaining confidence in talking to people, thinking on your feet because the show’s live.” Malual and Bul both look forward to getting more Canberra youth involved through the project.

Daniel Malouf
Radio 2XX, Canberra

Visit the 2XX Multicultural Youth Radio Facebook Page to get involved or learn more about the program.