Additional reporting by Talibouya Aidara, a reporter for Le Matin in Dakar, Senegal

School newspapers met in April at the first festival in Senegal dedicated to this kind of publication. The goal of the festival was to bring together students and professional journalists to exchange ideas and experiences.

Student life was a key issue in the most recent edition of Madeleine Toundou’s school newspaper with a special focus on the food served at the boarding school she attends five days a week on Ile de Goree, an island just off of Dakar. The 16-year-old student journalist from Maison dEducation Mariama Ba has also treated weightier subjects like politics and slavery in the pages of the school publication she has written for since last year.

We try to talk about what’s around us, said Toundou, who was among some 350 students, teachers and education officials who gathered for the opening ceremony of the inaugural school newspaper festival in Dakar on 1 April.

Organizers said the purpose of the two-day event was to bring together students and professional journalists to exchange ideas, both practical and theoretical, about the profession. The students’ exposure to the field was also a way to "make them understand the importance of this profession and also the dangers that it poses and the problems they might encounter," said Leopold Faye, director of instruction for middle and secondary schools for Senegal. Teachers also said they hoped the festival would encourage students to become journalists.

The event was an extension of the work that students are already doing in their classrooms, where issues of balance and fairness in reporting are regularly discussed, according to Abou Mbow, French teacher and an organizer of the event. Another goal is to help students think critically about what they read and see in the media around them.

We push them, said Mbow. We help them to create their own newspapers and behave as if they were real journalists and that teaches them the constraints of the media.

About 50 schools in Senegal already have publications, Mbow said, and schools that don’t were also invited to the festival to learn how it is done. Workshops led by professional journalists treated such topics as writing an editorial and conducting an interview.

Students also brought examples of their work in order to compete in a contest for best school publication. A panel of judges chose the best five publications during a ceremony on April 2.

Editor-in chief Idrissa Diao, from Lycee Seydina Limamou Laye, whose publication won the overall competition, said the festival was the first exposure to what other schools are doing.

"I am very happy," Diao said. For me who thought there was only the journal from my school, I now see that there are so many others."

Lycee Seydina’s publication has treated such topics as AIDS, drugs, smoking, the school dress code and even the pollution caused by the myriad of trucks used for local transportation, said student journalist Fatou Binetou Sow. The paper is "a way to inform other students about what is going on in the school and outside of school," she said.

Mamadou Seydou Gacko, 15, of Prytanee Militaire Charles N’Tchorere de Saint Louis, whose publication "Voix de l’Enfant de Troupe" was among the top five, said he has been involved with his school paper for the last two years. His reasons: increasing his vocabulary and making new friends.

To see photos from the event, click here: