Finding our voice

Head of the Journalism Department Pippa Green's thoughts on the launch of The Mamelodi Voice.

Welcome to the first edition of The Mamelodi Voice, a newspaper produced entirely by the second-year class in the Journalism Programme of the University of Pretoria. It is the result of an extensive community reporting project first launched by the Journalism Programme in 2010.

Mamelodi is one of the oldest townships in Pretoria, but it gets little local media coverage unless it is about crime, or about protests or about disasters. Yet it is a community rich in history and heritage with a present that brims with vitality and diversity.

We have found there, a host of community projects, the result of co-operation between the community, civil society, foreign embassies, international and local students and UP's own Mamaledi campus.

We hope this newspaper will help establish a stronger voice for both the community and the project workers who work so hard there, mostly out of sight.

Our heartfelt thanks go to Mr Edwin Smith, director of the Mamelodi campus, to Ms Helen Smith, South African representative of the Mamelodi Trust. to the community project workers and volunteers, and to the people of Mamelodi themselves for making this project possible.

We are proud of the entire second year class, who embarked on this story-telling venture with enthusiasm and commitment, and particularly of the dedicated editorial team who put this newspaper together.