Accolades for 3ZZZ's Student Express

3ZZZ’s Student Xpress project has been awarded the 2013 NSW Parliament Multicultural Media Award for Contribution to Social Inclusion and Multiculturalism.

Student Xpress is an 8 part radio series focusing on the lives of International Students in Australia. The series reported that many international students live below the poverty line in Australia, some earning as low as $5 an hour and many forced to live in overcrowded housing.

However, most students said that once they made connections with locally born students their lives improved dramatically. Not only did they feel more part of Australian and less lonely, their English improved and they were able to access higher paying jobs.

Student Xpress was made with funding assistance from the Community Broadcasting Foundation. Its purpose was to give broadcasting skills to young people from non-English speaking backgrounds and at the same time to provide a voice to a minority group in Australia.

The Student Xpress series was broadcast across Australia in early 2013 on the Community Radio Network.

Congratulations to 3ZZZ and to the Student Xpress team members: Ashan Siriwardene, Santiago Santos, Hien Ming Ding, Edgar Tan, Juan Miranda and Mary Sobredo and Executive Producer/Trainer Jan Smith.