Paul Shalala Scoops 2014 ZANEC Online Media Innovation Award

ZANEC Chairperson Elly Mwale handing over the award to Mr Shalala

Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) reporter Paul Shalala has scooped the Best Online Media Innovation Award at the 2014 ZANEC Media Awards held last night in Lusaka.

The awards where hosted by the Zambia National Education Coalition (ZANEC) to award journalists who have showed excellence in reporting on education issues this year.

Mr Shalala’s award winning story was published on his blog The Zambian Analyst on 12^th September, 2014 and it profiled over 20, 000 teachers who have formed a facebook group and a WhatsApp group to share best practices of teaching pupils across the country.

The story also showed how the interaction among teachers through social media was improving education standards as veteran teachers where using these platforms to mentor the new comers in the fraternity on how to come up with lesson plans and how to teach in class.

The Zambia Teachers Forum Facebook group has over 15,000 members while the WhatsApp group has over 5,000 members.

The award winning story can be read here: http://paulshalala.blogspot.com/2014/09/over-20000-teachers-using-social-media.html

This is the second media award Mr Shalala has won this year.

On 14th November this year, Mr Shalala received Second Prize during the 2014 Africa Fact Checking Media Awards held in Nairobi, Kenya for his story on the impact of multi-national mining investments on Zambia's food security.

ZNBC Deputy Assignments Editor Jeff Banda also scooped the overall award for the Television category.

Mr Banda’s story on the challenges faced by school going pupils to access education in Vubwi District of Eastern Province, earned him the award.

Paul Shalala and Jeff Banda (left) during the awards gala

The duo of Doreen Nawa and Violet Mengo of the Zambia Daily Mail scooped the overall prize in the print category while Lawrence Lihusha of Radio Christian Voice walked away with the overall radio award.

Henry Kabwe, Chairperson of the 2014 ZANEC Media Awards Committee, told the awards gala that 15 entries here submitted by seven journalists for judging.

“We looked for quality of the stories, innovation, impact of the stories and whether they raised issues of human rights. It is from this criteria that we chose the winning entries,” said Kabwe,  who is also chairperson of the Media Network on Children’s Rights and Development.

Meanwhile, during the awards gala, ZANEC Executive Director Grace Manyonga called for more efforts by Zambia stakeholders to achieve several goals on education set at the international level.

And opposition Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) President Edith Nawakwi, who spoke during the awards, said there was need to decentralize decision making in the education sector to the district level.

“Western Province has one of the lowest pass rates in the country because the Ministry of Education has not understood what is going on. The area floods a lot and pupils are cut off from schools. So we need to decentralize so that education authorities in Kalabo District can set the education calendar for themselves,” said Nawakwi, who is for the second time in three years running for Zambia’s presidential elections in 2015 as the only female candidate.