Teens To Provide World Youth Day Web Coverage From Sydney
WASHINGTON – Twenty-two “youth reporters” have been trained in Washington and Los Angeles to report on events at the tenth international World Youth Day, set for July 15-20 in Sydney, Australia. Training was sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in cooperation with MyCatholicVoice and the Embassy of Australia, as a way to provide Catholics around the world with real-time coverage of the event, in addition to coverage provided by traditional media. Training occurred during June at the Australian Embassy in Washington and the Australian Consulate in Los Angeles. Those unable to attend in person received training by attending “virtually” over the internet.
Each reporter was equipped with a palm-sized digital camcorder to capture World Youth Day events and upload them to MyCatholicVoice a Catholic online media resource and social networking medium. Coverage will support MyCatholicVoice’s newly announced web-based Virtual Pilgrimage for World Youth Day 2008 (www.mycatholicvoice.com/wyd2008).
The reporters, including seventeen young women and five young men ages eighteen and younger, will conduct “feet-on-the-street” interviews of attendees and participants and provide English and Spanish language program content for event blogs, multimedia events and interactive exchanges. Programming will also feature event music and entertainment, messages from bishops and more.
World Youth Day was first organized in 1985, at the urging of Pope John Paul II. Since then, it has been held every second or third year and has grown into the world’s largest youth event. Organizers expect approximately 225,000 youths from around the world to attend this year’s event, including an estimated 125,000 from the host nation.