MadMonk Interactive

On ABC’s This Week I saw a segment on Nick Kristof, Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist, and his “contest” where a winning teacher and student become foreign correspondents for a week. The catch, it’s in Africa, Kristof’s specialty. Well, war zones aside, it’s not a bad catch, it’s what I hope becomes a spark for more interest in such coverage. In the video clip on the right side of the ABC News Web page, Kristof mentions that one of the problems is that people see a headline about Africa, and they’re tuned out. So his reasoning is that if he can get a young person to blog, video, record about Africa, more audiences may listen. This year they’re traveling to Rwanda, Burundi, The Congo to shine the light on these neglected areas.

Earlier this year at our church’s Sunday School program for adults, we had UNC-Greensboro professor Jeff Jones teach a course called “Why Is Africa Dying?” which included a brief history of Africa which helped participants understand a bit more clearly how we find the state of the Sub-Saharan region the way it is, but at the same time, touched on the fact that some of the stereotypes are also limiting the collective understanding. So without repeating all Dr. Jones’ lectures, in a nutshell, Kristof’s “contest” was a welcome segment. Right now, I’ve five folks I know in Africa on Peace Corp duty and between them, Kristof’s columns, and Dr. Jones, this has been an increasingly enlightening year on Africa for me.