„We are like a classic German local newspaper,“ says Cornelia Gerlach, the project coordinator of „Amal, Berlin!“ The editors Khaled Al Aboud, Anas Khabir and Abdolrahman Omaren grin. The statement is true, but it is only half the truth. Although „Amal“ works according to the same criteria as German media, the platform is something very special: an online media project in which refugee journalists from five countries inform their compatriots and many others about Germany with reports in Arabic, Dari/Farsi and Ukrainian. „Amal goes Swabia“ was the motto these days. Three editors and project coordinator Gerlach also made a detour to tuenews INTERNATIONAL and attended an editorial meeting during a research trip to projects run by Diakonisches Werk in Baden-Württemberg. They did not leave Tübingen without a story: Khaled Al Aboud met with Roula Al Sagheer. The former tuenews employee has just published her new book „Herzklopfen und Hoffnung“. „Amal“ will report on it.
„Amal“ means hope in Arabic. At the beginning of 2016, ten refugee journalists from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and Egypt met at a workshop at the Protestant School of Journalism in Berlin to prepare for journalistic work in Germany. Under the leadership of journalists Julia and Cornelia Gerlach, a platform was created that provides refugees with local news in their native languages – a local daily newspaper for smartphones, as „Amal“ describes itself. Today, the internet platform distributes local and national news in three languages, with colleagues from Ukraine also joining the team. There are now not only texts, but also videos. In Berlin, 14 journalists now report on everything you need to know to arrive, feel at home in your new city and participate in political and cultural life. They pick up news and reports from local media and write their own features and reports. Since 2019, „Amal“ has also had its own editorial office in Hamburg, and in 2023 another editorial office was added in Frankfurt am Main. A total of 25 editors are employed on a half-time basis – all of them professionals with journalistic training. The medium is supported by the Gemeinschaftswerk der evangelischen Publizistik, financed in part by funds from the Protestant Church and several foundations, including the Körber Foundation. „Amal, Frankfurt“ was awarded the Hessian Integration Prize in 2023. The platform is active on Facebook at all three locations and engages directly with readers.
Journalists live from and with language. This is what makes it so incredibly difficult for them to build a new life in exile. The path to working as a journalist in Germany is a rocky one. But it can be done, as examples from the Amal editorial team show. Anas Khabir, for example, studied law in Aleppo and journalism in France. Today, he not only works for Amal, but also for the French radio station Rosana and as a video producer for the Associated Press news agency. Khalid worked as an Arabic teacher and journalist in Syria and, alongside Amal, also gained a foothold at the RBB broadcaster in Berlin. Some members of the editorial team have since made the leap into the German media and completed traineeships at ZDF or the Berlin Tagesspiegel. Others are studying alongside their editorial work. They all speak German.
In their early days in 2016, the Amal editors created issues of the Protestant magazine Chrismon that were aimed at refugees. But taking them to where the new arrivals lived was anything but easy, as Cornelia Gerlach told us in Tübingen. That’s why she is thrilled when she holds some of the wall newspapers from the early days of tuenews in her hands: „I find that really impressive.“
During the visit to the tuenews editorial office, familiarity quickly sets in. At the end of the meeting, the visitors from the German capital want to know where they could go to eat. Arabic language fragments quickly fly around the room, apparently the advantages and disadvantages of Swabian versus Arabic cuisine are being weighed up. It continues the next day. For „Amal on tour“, the members of the editorial team want to land ten reports in the southwest. They have already been to Münsingen, a youth project in the Enzkreis district is still on the agenda and a visit to Schwenningen. One reporter is on her way to Lörrach in southern Baden – even though this is not „Swabia“.
https://amalberlin.de/de/
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JournalistInnen von “Amal” zu Besuch bei tuenews INTERNATIONAL. Foto: tuenews INTERNATIONAL / Martin Klaus.
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