Venezuelan journalists visit SVG

As part of its regional integration project, three Venezuelan journalists from the Nuevo Día newspaper recently spent a week in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, observing the culture and way of life, learning about our history and forging links with members of the electronic and print media.{{more}}

The journalists, who left the country on Wednesday, March 18th, hosted a meet and greet session with local media personnel, along with Venezuelan Ambassador Yoel Pérez Marcano, at the Venezuelan Embassy, on Monday, March 16th. The team included Neida Olivares, Dagoberto Chirinos, an Administrator at Nuevo Día, and Xiomara Castillo, also a university lecturer.

This year’s project, the second of its kind, will focus on fostering favourable relationships between the Caribbean region and Venezuela, so that the Venezuelans can learn about the Vincentian way of life and, in turn, we about them. In 2008, the newspaper, located in Paraguaná, Falcón, conducted an integration project, which mainly involved traveling through the Latin American region. This year, the team has already traveled to St. Lucia and will journey on to destinations such as Trinidad and Tobago, Surinam, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Chirinos explained that Nuevo Día accomplishes much more than simply reporting the news. It is greatly involved in many social and community projects aimed at improving the lives and knowledge of their people. He added that the newspaper’s social outlook means that the welfare of its employees is of utmost importance, and should they want to pursue postgraduate studies, the company will pay for it.

The focus of integration being on a non-political level, Olivares believes that the language barrier should not hinder the exchange of information between Venezuelans and Caribbean people. In fact, she hopes in the process ideas will be exchanged on how to tackle social issues that afflict us all. In particular, Olivares recalled witnessing the different ways in which various countries are coping with the fallout from the global economic crisis.

Speaking to SEARCHLIGHT, Olivares was extremely positive about the introduction of an exchange programme between local media houses and Nuevo Día at some point in the future.

Nuevo Día is a relatively new daily publication that was established 5 years ago. At present they print approximately 35,000 newspapers per day and cater to a population of 450,000. The team has already been publishing articles about their Vincentian experience on the newspaper’s website www.nuevodia.com.ve.(JSV)