Violet Otindo
K24 Television, Kenya
Winning the CNN MultiChoice African Journalist 2009 Award, Environment category, was the best thing that ever happened in my life, as an individual and as a professional.
To begin with, interacting and sharing experiences with other journalists during the awards made me acutely aware that the challenges faced by journalists are universal and that the passion I have for telling stories was shared by all the journalists. There was therefore a need for excellence as a journalist in every story I told.
The award suddenly put me in the league of high profile journalists in Kenya where my opinion is now highly regarded, as an individual and as professional. Best of all it has opened numerous doors for me where I have travelled to many countries attending seminars, conferences and training.
It has been my desire to go for further studies, and recently I got an invitation to apply for a one year sponsored fellowship at Harvard University, all this, because I was a winner at the CNN MultiChoice awards.
Winning has made me more focused than ever before and I will be going further both as a journalist and as an individual, and I will always remember how being a CNN MultiChoice African Journalist winner helped me catapult my career that had stagnated for long.
