Journalists Natalia Sergheev (Moldovan Service) and Alexander Blumberg (Multimedia Unit) were awarded the 2016 Young ADAMI Media Prize for their television documentary, Generația Emigrației (Generation Emigration), part of the “Pur şi Simplu” (“Just Simply”) series produced by RFE/RL’s Radio Europa Liberă. The documentary was broadcast in both Russian and Romanian and aired Moldova’s popular TV 1 channel in September.
The documentary explores the growing phenomenon of mass youth emigration from Moldova by telling the stories of three young people who chose to leave their low-paying jobs and their country in search of a better life elsewhere in Europe. In Moldova, 16% of people aged 15 to 29 are working abroad with most saying they leave because they do not see a future in the country.
On November 24, Sergheev accepted the award at an award ceremony in Kiev, Ukraine, presented by Dunja Mijatović, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, and Thorbjørn Jagland, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe.
The ADAMI Media Prize was created in 2015 to encourage filmmakers, journalists, and audio-visual media professionals in the EU Eastern Partnership countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine) to promote topics of migration, tolerance, and cultural diversity.
The Young ADAMI Media Prize is for TV or film productions. It is open to TV stations, TV production companies, and independent producers based in any of the EaP countries—as well as film and TV schools, journalism schools, media & communication colleges. Participants cannot be over 28 years old.