As the woman on the ground for UNICEF in Haiti, Roshan Khadivi (international, 2000) has come along way from City’s journalism department on St John Street.
In her role as media and external relations officer for UNICEF, she formed part of an emergency team. Putting her City training into practice, she gathered data and information from the field and fed it to visiting journalists and to news desks in London, New York and around the world.
The UNICEF office was damaged as a result of the earthquake. Khadivi said: “I had to sleep and work in tiny tents on the rocks next to the airport”.
She said: “As a communication officer all my journalistic skills were required: you have to know the issues, you have to know your audience and try to bring the stories to them.”
Khadivi helps journalists gather their own information: “I organised field visits to the UNICEF project sites, which many journalists might not be aware of or do not have access to, so that part of the story can be covered.” UNICEF projects include child protection, education, health, such as vaccination and distribution of medical supplies and nutrition as well as water sanitation and hygiene.
Khadavi isn’t the only alumna reporting from natural disasters this year.
Fiona Scott (international, 2010) wrote about the Chilean Earthquake in February, when she was visiting her family in Santiago. “I was supposed to come back to London on the Saturday, but got stuck in Chile” she said. “So I decided the least I could do was help push as much information out there as possible.”
She said that writing about a country’s tragedy while experiencing that tragedy first hand is “the best way to do it. The only way to really get a sense for what’s going on is to see and in this case feel it for yourself.”
By Jessica Baron