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Video Interviews
Note: The opinions presented are not necessarily those of the Government of Canada.
(Video players are available here: QuickTime | Windows Media)
Transcript:
Setting up an NGO
My name is Alexandra Sicotte-Lévesque. I am originally from Montreal. I am doing a master’s in Human Rights at the London School of Economics. I am also the co-founder and executive director of Journalists for Human Rights, which was founded two years ago.
I was very interested in the media when I was doing my undergrad degree. I worked in Kenya for six months and I wrote a dissertation on the media and how it helped shape democracy in Kenya. My idea of starting Journalists for Human Rights started there.
I was sent to Côte d’Ivoire through Foreign Affairs Canada and Acadia University. I was a junior professional consultant there; I was helping Côte d’Ivoire write their report to the UN convention on the “Elimination of Racial Discrimination.” This is an extremely difficult topic, especially in the Ivory Coast, considering the socio-political situation there.
When I came back home I felt that I had to do something, at least for my conscience. So I had the idea to create Journalists for Human Rights, to combine both fields—the media and human rights—to raise awareness about human rights issues in Africa.
Administratively it is not very complicated. In Canada it is quite straightforward—we had to register as a non-profit corporation and we had to register as a charity with Revenue Canada. The most difficult thing is to receive funding, especially when you are first starting an NGO and you don’t have much experience in the international field. We did but not extensively; we were quite young. It was difficult to find a donor who would trust our project and invest in us. We were lucky that Foreign Affairs Canada looked at our project on the basis of the content and decided to give us a chance to start our project in Ghana.
Once we started our project in Ghana and once we had a bit of funding, it was much easier to ask other donors for money. Initially you would think that CIDA would be the prime agency to get funding from for projects like this. But because we were a young organization—we were less than two years old—CIDA could not give us funding. A Canadian non-profit organization looking for funding from CIDA has to be in existence for more than two years. That was a huge barrier, so we were quite happy to learn that Foreign Affairs could look at our project even though we had nothing to back us up.
Eventually things started to happen on their own. We had a lot of contacts and volunteers. We were able to get a good community of volunteers in Canada that we sent to Africa to work with journalists in Ghana to produce human rights materials with newspapers, radio and television. They also trained Ghanaian journalists on reporting on human rights issues and informing the population on different things taking place in Ghana.
There are a lot of people involved. In Ghana we have about 10 journalists that we work with full-time. But every six months we also organize a big conference on human rights issues for journalists in Ghana. About 100 journalists participate in each conference.
Every six months we send young Canadian journalists to work with the Ghanaian journalists. They shadow them each workday. What drives our organization are volunteers, and we have a large community of them in Canada. There are three or four people working full-time, one in Ghana and three in Canada, including myself, although I am on leave at the moment in London.
We are now trying to expand our resources to other countries. To do this we try to partner with other organizations that are already in place in those countries. What we are doing right now is a project with Canada World Youth where we work in Senegal, Benin and Canada. We have young students or recent graduates, interested in journalism or human rights, that are working in Rimouski and Sherbrooke on media projects related to human rights or with a local organization that works in the human rights field to enhance their public profile. They are each partnered with youth from Senegal and Benin for three months. Then half the group will be leaving for Senegal and the other half for Benin.
Why
I was raised everywhere. I was born in Montreal but because of my parents’ work I was dragged around the world. So I was exposed to a lot of issues at a very young age.
It’s difficult for me to go to Africa or a developing country and see the situation there and come back home to Canada and not do anything about it. So by working in the field of human rights and trying to do something about it—I’m not convincing myself that I am changing the world—at least I feel like I am trying to do something. When I wake up in the morning I feel better about myself; I feel like I’m doing my part.
It’s funny. I have two sisters who are in the corporate world and I admire what they do, but personally I wouldn’t be able to do that on a daily basis.
I feel that in Canada in general we have a responsibility. We have a lot and we can also learn a lot from Africa. That is what I am learning in my program at the London School of Economics. I am reading many documents on human rights dating back to 200 years ago. We have a lot to learn from Africa—it is a continent that is virtually unknown. People unconsciously think that it is a continent that is doomed, so why would we look at it and work there? But I think if we look closely there is a lot that we can learn from Africa. |
Setting up an NGO