Watch: Young Journalists Take on Big Problems With ‘Scrappy News’

Sitting in a colourful newsroom made of trash, 10-year-old Dheeraj quips, “Hello and welcome to Scrappy news. We come to you from the fishing village in Worli!” as he opens the eight-hour marathon news bulletin that he and his co-anchor, 12-year-old Valeska, are hosting. The tip of the beautiful Worli fishing village has been converted into a makeshift newsroom, overlooking the sea.

Scrappy means trash and news is of course news. It also means building something new from the old. Even our newsroom is build out of trash.

Abdul Samad Shaikh, Reporter for Scrappy News

The Children’s Scrappy News Service was started by the NGO ‘Going to School’. As part of the initiative, auditions were held in Mumbai, Bihar and Bengaluru in 2015. Thousands of children participated in the auditions and 11 were selected to finally take part in the initiative.

“While returning home from school, I saw pamphlets being distributed about the upcoming auditions for Scrappy news. I decided to go for it,” said 14-year-old Rajlaxmi, a news reporter for Children’s Scrappy News Service.

After training that went on for two years, Scrappy News went live on 14 November, recording the first of 13 episodes that will be uploaded on the Going To School website every weekend for the next 13 weeks. Experienced journalists and television anchors volunteered to train the young journalists in the making, giving the kids a chance to report on pressing civic issues in their cities.

We started this because there are so many problems in this world and the adults have become very busy. No one has the time to solve anything. We use petrol and diesel cars for instance, these pollute the air. Look at the condition of Delhi because of pollution. We are trying to spread awareness about this through our stories.

Dheeraj Bhatt, Anchor at Scrappy News Service

I go to different areas like slums, markets and ask them questions on different topics. Recently, I did a story on ‘No place to play’. As part of this, I went up to adults and asked them whether they had space to play when they were kids, were these grounds clean?

Rajlaxmi Sapkale, Reporter at Scrappy News Service

Participating in their own news show could open up new opportunities for the children as training to become reporters is not something most their families could afford.

“I used to sit outside when Samad used to rehearse for reporting and they used to tell me that he is very talented. This made me so happy! Even if my daughter is no more, at least her child is doing so well,” said an emotional Rabia, 15-year-old Samad’s grandmother.

At 6:30 everyday he wakes up and goes to school. He’s in school till one and then goes for tuition. From 3 pm he has practice at Scrappy News. But he’s very excited to work with them, that’s why he’s never tired. 

Rajendra Bhatt, Dheeraj’s father

While Dheeraj aspires to be a scientist working on sustainability, Rajlaxmi wants to be an airhostess and Samad an actor, the trio are now also considering pursuing journalism as a career option and aim to use their ‘scrappy’ ideas to make a difference in the future.

Cameraperson: Sanjoy Deb

Video Editor: Veeru Mohan

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