Skillset Millennium Award Winners start training

Nineteen individuals from ethnic minority communities have received funding to develop their media skills in projects that will benefit their local communities.
The projects include a video documentary about interior design in African and African-Caribbean Communities in Britain, a radio documentary highlighting the many types of arranged marriage in the Asian community, and a website that promotes sexual health to young people. The grants have been awarded by the Skillset Millennium Awards Scheme, which has received funding from the National Lottery via the Millennium Commission.
The three year scheme will provide an opportunity for up to 40 individuals a year to receive funding to develop their project after receiving training from BBC Training and Development in either professional journalism, radio journalism and production, digital video camera and film, or multimedia production. All the award winners will attend a Training the Trainer course designed to equip them to pass on the skills they have learned to their wider communities. The initiative is being delivered on a revolving UK-wide basis with the programme starting in 2001 with London, the South East and East of England. Later this year the scheme will be rolled out to cover Scotland, Northern Ireland and the North of England and the last year (2003), Wales, the Midlands and the South West of England.
Dinah Caine, Chief Executive of Skillset (pictured), said: “I’d like to congratulate all of the 19 people who have received a Skillset/BBC Millennium Award and wish them all the best with incredibly diverse and interesting projects. The great thing about this project is that once these individuals have developed new media skills they will then be trained in how to pass them on throughout their communities. Increasing diversity within our industry is reliant upon projects such as this.”
(GB)