Budding journalists hone their skills with Little Troopers
Carrying on the festive feels with our ‘Festive Forces’ series, we’re pleased to share another update from a great project supported through our recent Forces Communities Together programme.
Little Troopers received £10,000 to create a newspaper for military families, with content created by Service children.
The Little Troopers Gazette has recently gone to print, packed with great content, and is already making a difference to military kids.
Louise Fetigan, Founder of Little Troopers, gives us an update…
Firstly, we created a dedicated area on our website for the Little Troopers Gazette, then created a section for our budding Little Trooper journalists!
Military children who want to create an article for the newspaper can easily download templates to help them be creative and get started. From help with interviewing, how to take great images, and article templates.
It’s been fantastic to see so many wanting to get involved – this really is a newspaper for military children, written by military children.
There are 1,000 copies of the winter edition on their way to families at home, schools with military children, and welfare organisations working with military children. Work starts on the second edition in early 2021 with dispatch to families being March 2021.
Giving young people a voice
Military children love to be involved, they love to talk about their life and where they live and the gazette gives them that platform.
The Little Troopers Gazette is packed with content written by and for military children and is a place where young people can come together to share their experiences of military life in print, as well as reading about other little troopers around the world who are just like them.
The Gazette gives military children a voice, a place that is just for them.
One military family said: “Many thanks for letting us know that Kiki was successful in having her article printer in the Gazette.
She loved asking her Grandad questions about his life and it encouraged her to be more curious about her journey as a military child compared to that of mine.
It created some interesting conversation between us both, about feelings, experiences and how although we are years apart, we both have the same thoughts about being a military child.
I think being a military child, evoking conversation and feelings is always a positive thing.
Being a Little Trooper really gives her an identity and a self of belonging to the military child community, even more so being able to write a personal article for other children to read.”
Overcoming Covid restrictions
An important element for all those awarded through the Forces Communities Together programme was that projects should be able to take place during any Covid restrictions.
Little Troopers have provided something positive for young people to get involved with during these challenging times, with online access, downloadable materials and a creative focus.
Find out more
Find out more about the Forces Communities Together programme and the great work it supported, here.