Meet The Pros Event

On Thursday April 25, Westchester Community College held its annual “ Meet the Pros” event at their main campus. This event allowed two journalists Allison Shelley and Melissa Turley to speak upon their experience. Both journalists traveled around the world to learn about crisis that many of us are not aware, also to educate the United States on those crises. Allison Shelley and Melissa Turley are two Pulitzer Center journalists.

           

Melissa Turley

Melissa Turley reported from South Africa as the 2012 Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium International Reporting Student Fellow from The George Washington University in Washington, DC. Melissa traveled to South Africa and reported on women right. These rights included violence, LGBT, and women being abused. Men rape women that are homosexuals and believe they can turn them “straight”. Law enforcement is not as helpful as they should be to these women. On the other hand, that still does not stop certain women to keep fighting for their rights.

Allison Shelley

Allison Shelley is a documentary photographer and multimedia creator. Allison was a former staff photographer for the Washington Times. Allison traveled to Haiti in 2010 and Nepal. However, Shelley focused her presentation more on Nepal. She reported on the abuse of young girls in Nepal. In India girls are forced to be married as young as 12 years old, and forced to have children. When the girls are menstruating cycling they are forced to sleep in this hut where animals are kept.

Devon Smith

Devon Smith was the first Westchester Community College student to win a Pulitzer Center grant. Devon will be traveling to Ireland to cover a story on the conflict between the two different religion Catholics and Protestant. Devon explained how serious religion is taken in Ireland. She will report on the violence and why segregation is so controversial in Ireland.  

At the end of the presentation all three of the young ladies sat down to answer question that the audience asked. They also had a meet and greet where students interview all three ladies Allison, Melissa and Devon. During the meet and greet it allowed students to ask question as well as faculty. All three ladies did a remarkable job when delivering their story. During the presentation all ladies had the audience full attention. All three stories were touching and open many hearts.

For more information visit:

http://pulitzercenter.org/