New Vision's Ariba wins Thomson prize

By Vision Reporter

New Vision’s Caroline Ariba has won the prestigious annual UK Foreign Press Association (FPA) Award. She has beaten two other top contenders.

The prize, part of the UK Foreign Press Association Awards, was presented by  Lord Chandos, Chairman of the Thomson Foundation, at the event held at the Sheraton Park Hotel in London last night.
 
Caroline came ahead of two other finalists – Fisayo Soyombo, editor of The Cable in Nigeria and Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava, an investigative journalist with the Hindustan Times, India – following scrutiny of an initial entry list of more than 100.
 
The award enabled journalists aged 30 and under from countries with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita of less than $20,000 to enter their work for scrutiny by the Foundation – the worlds longest established international media development organisation – and then the FPA judges.
 
Caroline’s submissions include a harrowing description of the plight of mothers in Tisai, a little known Island in Uganda’s Eastern district of Kumi. In this story, Caroline reveals how neglected its people are and how many babies die there without record of their existence.
 
In her second piece she reports on how a woman in the remote Kween district died after she was allegedly mutilated by a “traditional birth attendant” who should have been assisting her to give birth. In her third story, published on a Christmas Day, she speculates on whether Jesus Christ would have survived if he had been born in a Ugandan health centre.
 
Caroline is already a double award-winner (2014 and 2015) of the Uganda National Journalist Award (UNJA) for arts and culture and she also won a Tumaini award for reporting on children’s rights last year. She started her career in journalism by sending short stories to New Vision.

After receiving her latest prize, Caroline said:  “ After receiving her latest prize, Caroline said:  “Recognition at this level means everything to me and the experience of the trip has opened up doors and given me a sense of what I need to do to get to the next level. My friends and family will be dancing round a drum at home!”
 
Nigel Baker, Chief Executive of the Thomson Foundation said: “The judges were impressed with the quality of all three finalists this year and said they all had great potential but Caroline stood out because of her wide range of journalistic skills.
 
“It’s encouraging to find new talent of such high calibre from across the globe, able to report on issues which are often difficult and almost always challenging, but need to be brought to the attention of us all.”  
 
Each entrant for the award had to submit a portfolio of three published pieces of work produced in the 12 months preceding the deadline for submissions. They could be in any format – print, audio, video, multimedia or a combination of all four.
 
The journalists who entered were also asked to submit a written statement of no more than 600 words giving a summary of the content of each story and any impact it had on the public debate in the country of publication