WINNIPEG - U-Multicultural TV has recently hired Yuliia Kovalenko, who fled from Ukraine shortly after the war started. As a journalist, hired under he Local Journalist Initiative of Heritage Canada and run by Cactus (the Association of Community Television Users and Stations), she enhances the impact of local journalism in her new city of Winnipeg.
She covers stories of people in the Ukrainian community, both long established and newly arrived, in a depth that comes from speaking the Ukrainian language and knowing the the culture. This creates a window onto and a media connection for the local community, both of Ukrainian background and the larger population. She also interviews refugees and immigrants of diverse backgrounds providing to viewers a rich source of information on the settlement issues that they face and where help can be found.
Now approaching her first anniversary as an LJI journalist at Winnipeg's U Multicultural Channel, Kovalenko still remembers the day her life changed forever. A university student taking a journalism degree in Ukraine's capital of Kiev after years of building up a dedicated social media following with her self-produced YouTube videos, Kovalenko recalls the grim moment when she realized her studies - and her life - were about to be put on hold.
"It was the worst day in my life," Kovalenko recalls. "I was living with my friend, and when the war started, I didn't know what to do. When I heard the first sirens, I faced a depression for the first time in my life. I thought, 'I have no future - where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do?'"
After successfully contacting her family and attempting to map out her next steps, Kovalenko found safe passage to Poland with her best friend from university and soon learned that Canada had developed a new program to fast-track the immigration process for Ukrainians fleeing from the Russian invasion. However, Kovalenko also seized the opportunity to start a new life for herself.
"I thought it was a great opportunity to build a new life, and to start my life from scratch," she told Telile Community Television's Adam Cooke during a December interview for the Nova Scotia station's weekly panel-discussion program Roundtable.
While she has enjoyed working with her U Multicultural Channel colleagues and found a home within Winnipeg's well-rooted Ukrainian community ("Canadians are super nice"), Kovalenko is still troubled by the nearly year-long military offensive in Ukraine and does not hold out optimism that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military generals will reverse course in the near future.
"It is extremely hard for me sometimes," she admitted.
"My mom will send me video of rockets flying in the sky, and explosions...I can't even concentrate on my work and I make a lot of mistakes in my editing. But sometimes doing my work and my editing is like a meditation for me...My work is my biggest hobby and it's what I love to do."
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A propos l’IJL
LJI Impact is the section of commediaportal.ca where the journalists and their organizations participating in CACTUS' Local Journalism Initiative can share their greatest successes.
Through the written stories, photos and videos you see in the LJI Impact section, you'll be able to read first hand accounts about how the presence of a community journalist is making a difference in communities across Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative and the Community Media Portal.
The Community Media Portal is a gateway to the audio-visual media created by community media centres across Canada. These include traditional community TV and radio stations, as well as online and new media production centres.
Community media are not-for-profit production hubs owned and operated by the communities they serve, established both to provide local content and reflection for their communities, as well as media training and access for ordinary citizens to the latest tools of media production, whether traditional TV and radio, social and online media, virtual reality, augmented reality or video games.
The Community Media Portal has been funded by the Local Journalism Initiative (the LJI) of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) in association with the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec (the Fédération). Under the LJI, over 100 journalists have been placed in underserved communities and asked to produce civic content that underpins Canadian democratic life.
