Being heard: Mentoring as part of a community media intervention

The AuSud Media Project is a community media intervention aimed at enabling Sudanese-Australian to develop a media voice. One of the elements of the project was a mentoring program that partnered Sudanese-Australians with working journalists. This article investigates the experiences and assessments of the mentoring program, highlighting different aspirations held by participants, language tutors and journalists, and the power relationships involved. We find that although mentors and participants had different goals for their mentoring experience, the participants felt heard by their mentors and by extension the Australian media. However the mentoring relationships also took place in a system of broader inequalities and structures that raise questions about how to effect change through such media interventions.