Rogers announces 2020 Sportsnet Diversity and Gender Equity Initiative recipients
TORONTO — As part of Rogers Sports and Media’s commitment to increasing diverse voices in media, OMNI Television announced today it will award $60,000 in scholarships over the next three years to post-secondary students across Canada who are pursuing careers in ethnic and third-language journalism.
The new national scholarship program will award 10 scholarships of $2,000 each annually to students at universities and colleges. The first year of scholarships will be awarded in August 2021. More information is available here.
“The global pandemic has reinforced how critical ethnic and third-language media is when it comes to engaging Canada’s multicultural communities with the latest news and information, and we believe the OMNI scholarship program will inspire more diverse young talent to pursue this important genre of news,” said Jake Dheer, senior manager at OMNI Television, in a press release.
In addition to the launch of OMNI’s scholarship program, Rogers also announced today the first recipients of the Sportsnet Diversity and Gender Equity Initiative, launched in partnership with Ryerson University’s Faculty of Communications and Design, which is home to the RTA School of Media, Global Experiential Sport Lab (GXSLab) and sport media research. Announced in January 2020 and launched in fall 2020, the initiative aims to empower students from diverse backgrounds to pursue careers in sport media.
Through the initiative, Sportsnet committed $100,000 to provide scholarships to four students — two high-performing third-year students in Ryerson’s Sport Media program and two students entering the program — who identify as a woman, Indigenous, and/or a member of an equity-seeking group. The recipients of the 2020 Sportsnet Diversity and Gender Equity Initiative scholarships are Ella Bonaldi, Joshua Kim, Rania Elihali and Vanessa Catanzaro.
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