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Mother Touch High School journalism and public speaking group

Shepherd Chimururi : Cool Lifestyle Correspondent

Have you ever wondered who are some of your role models when it comes to the art of writing, from The Sunday Mail Bridge editor Charles Mushinga to Cool Lifestyle’s Swagga T, who have a passion for uplifting the young ones when it comes to writing. They were once young students who had passion for writing and started at school journalism clubs.School journalism clubs have since time immemorial been the breeding grounds of many media houses.

Most journalists that dominate the media industry today started their practice while still at school. When properly run, journalism clubs offer industrial skills at a tender age.

This is where they developed their language and writing skills through writing poems, short stories, drama scripts, public speaking speeches.

School journalism clubs come in different forms some call themselves writers clubs, some debate and speech, clubs but at the end they have a common denominator — they write to publish their stories in school magazines and eventually national newspapers.

At Mother Touch High School the writer’s club also doubles up as the public speaking club. The leading light of the club Tinovimba Tagara (19) who represented the school at the schools public speaking competition held at Christ Ministries.

“In our club we encourage members to write their own poems, speeches, short stories and present them to everyone. We meet twice a week to read our speeches and correct each other. My major achievement so far has been the article I wrote about our school’s driving school that was published in The Sunday Mail this year.

“I really felt proud to have my article read nationally by fellow students. To me that was my first practical step in fulfilling my dreams as writer.”

“I want to venture into film production either as a script writer or an actress. So far I am working on my writing skills as well as being groomed on self confidence,” she told Cool Lifestyle.

The school headboy, Eugene Nyanhonga (20), an Arts student who said his role model in the media is television presenter Oscar Pambuka of the ZBC, said the greatest achievement of his team has been to publish their annual school magazine.

“We wrote the articles and held fundraising activities that included talent shows. Our success story here is McDonald Gadzikwa a motivational speaker and founder of the Springs of Life Motivations,” he said.

At Girls High School, A-Level student Heather Mangate (18) is the writer’s club president.

“We are working on producing this year’s school magazine called The Lioness Times. In our club we have a structure starting with the club president, vice president, chief editor, chief correspondent, administrator,, reporters and graphic designer,” she said in an interview with Cool Lifestyle.

“I have already written two books one entitled ‘Meant to be’ which is a tragedy and ‘Grow big and go places’ which is dedicated to my late half cousin Nickson Magolisi who died last year. He was a student at Prince Edward.

“I haven’t yet published my works because my mum told me to wait until I finish school. But I challenge other students to stop writing fictitious stories without relevance to their Zimbabwean context. Let’s address about real issues that affect us like child rights, girl child abuse, the African child,” she said.

Trinity College journalism club chairlady Rudoff Mtetwa said apart from providing news coverage at college functions they have bigger plans for the third term.

“We want to leave a mark at the school. We are planning a media tour at Herald House, Star FM and ZTV. Our mission is to go there and see for ourselves those journalists and DJs and see how they process their stuff.

“We want to interact with them to hear from them how they made it. We want them to explain to us how article writing is different from writing a composition,” he said.