‘For You’ is the title of a new pilot children’s program that could serve as a model for Iraqi TV stations.

To qualify for the production workshop, stations applied with their own program concept. The three stations with the best concepts were then asked to send a production team to take part.

Together with DW-AKADEMIE trainer Daniela Leese and her colleagues, the teams looked closely at their program ideas, re-working some of them for the pilot program.

They also learned more about choosing topics that interest children, researching them, and adapting them for child viewers. “Much of this,” says Leese, “was new for the teams.”

During the production phase, participants produced six items for the program, including short reports with child reporters, portraits, and service items - all produced for the target audience: children between the ages of five to eleven. The host, of course, was also a child.

“The teams worked with a lot of motivation, endurance and ambition,” Daniela Leese stresses. “Their filming got better every day. We really saw this in the cutting room: reports that were visually appealing, entertaining and informative for the viewers.”

The productions teams will soon present the program to their stations.

As a follow-up, DW-AKADEMIE will provide in-house training in 2010 to support the teams’ program ideas and to establish informative children’s shows as part of their stations’ programming.