Bon Buzz

Socratic dialogue, free writing, drawing each other’s faces, blindly observing what is going on around you in a bustling street in N’Djamena, the participants of the intensive 7 day workshop of the Bon Buzz project did it all. Sometimes you have to challenge your thoughts, break free of established habits, get exposed to new ideas and ways of working when you want to advance in your work. Especially when you are a young journalist, or a publicist, who is born and raised within a highly polarised society and you feel the urge to change the way you are reporting on that society, but you don’t know how.

Enter: the Bon Buzz project, a two round 7-day workshop on writing depolarizing stories in Chad. After Bon Buzz 1, which second workshop finished in February 2024, an energetic mixed group of 18 new and 5 older participants took part in the first round of a new series. In regard to Bon Buzz 1 some parts of the program have been tweaked. This time a more interactive approach led participants to critically discuss the meaning of polarisation among themselves and how their stories could convincingly change perceptions in a polarised society. Having both new and older participants proved a success in this regard; as students helped each other to sharpen the angle of their stories and deepen their understanding of polarisation and depolarisation. After finishing their propositions to produce a written or audio story (podcast) the coming weeks they will start their research and the writing and producing of their stories. We can’t wait to see the results. Bon Buzz is supported by the Dutch Embassy in Chad and executed in partnership with CRASH, a local academic research institute.

Bon Buzz evolved from Tchadoblog.