Giving young people a voice

By Tory Milne
BBC News Online

Tory with three of the students

One of the most novel ways for the young unemployed to spend the summer is to set up their own radio station. But it's not just a way of killing time - it could help them into careers.

Canning Town in east London is one of the most deprived areas of the country and has an unusually high percentage of young people, many of whom are out of work.

This summer, however, for the first time, they have the option of making their voice heard by taking part in Break FM, a licensed community radio station which aims to give them media skills with a view to getting a job.

The station is the brain child of Richard Morland and Trevor Blackman, who run Apple Pie Enterprises (APE), a media training and production company funded by West Ham & Plaistow New Deal for Communities.

Working in the studio

Local students who took courses in radio journalism and presenting for several weeks, are now putting their skills into practice by broadcasting to their community.

Break will be operating on a Restricted Service Licence (RSL) for a month, with the aim of it becoming a full-time community station in the future, and is funded by a mixture of government funds and corporate sponsorship.

The BBC is one of the organisations supporting the venture, by lending staff who can share their experiences and skills.

Claudine Toutoungi from BBC World Service has helped to create a radio drama series, based on life in a pirate radio station. Each five-minute episode, which features many DJs and MCs playing their real-life roles, is produced from the station's offices in a council-owned terrace house next to a dual carriageway.

Here some of the young people involved tell what it has meant to them.

18-year-old Sami Qasem, 18, left school two years ago and due to a lack of career advice, chose to do a BTEC in graphic design, as "it was the most creative thing I could think of". Then a friend introduced him to the station, and he got so involved that he now works for the company as a technical trainer. His friends are bemused by his success. "At first, they thought it was just a little a hobby of mine - but now, they're thinking - oh, maybe he's quite good!".

Leo Shagourie, 18, had to leave school without his GCSEs because of a disagreement over his options. So instead of following the traditional route, he went to college to study for an NVQ level 1 in childcare. However he hasn't lost his passion for drama and music, and his goal is to be an actor, and to combine that with work in the music industry.

Harkamal Dhallu, 20, is determined to go against what she describes as "Asian society's norms", and work in the media. She says most people in her family work as lawyers, business people, pharmacists and doctors. "But I want to be the first person in my family or even street to work in the media. I want to be the first to break that mould".

Stephanie Davey is 18, and passionate about reggae. So much so that she plans to devote a whole show to it on Break FM. "My boyfriend's Jamaican, so I hear it a lot," she says. She works full time for the Royal Air Force club in Piccadilly, but squeezes her love for music into her two days off a week. She left school at 16 with the aim of getting on to a fashion course, but dropped a grade in her art class and couldn't get in. Disillusioned, she spent a lot of time indoors watching MTV - and it was then that she discovered how much she liked music, and decided to pursue what is now her ultimate ambition - to be a music producer.

Ahmed Hussein, 17, is doing a BTEC in computing at college, but says "it's put me off an IT career completely". He says he wants to be more creative, and works part time as a DJ on Pirate Radio. "It's my only option. I do it for the love of the music. You get to do things your own way". He's taking the DJ course at Break FM, and hopes to eventually work as DJ on an official radio station. In the mean time, he's working part time in a record shop to make ends meet.

Deja Marius is 16, and celebrating finishing her GCSEs. She's planning to start her A-Levels in September, but in the meantime, she's taking the journalism course at Break FM. She knows the value of the experience she's getting - "if you want to get anywhere in this life, you've got to have education". She's not intending to go to university though - instead, she hopes to use her experience on the station to launch her career in the media. She's narrowed down her ambition to two fields - either music production (which she hopes to combine with her love of singing) or journalism.