IAR News

June 2002

First annual IAR animal welfare awards

As part of its promotional campaign to encourage animal welfare awareness in Malta, International Animal Rescue introduced an award for the radio and television stations that best promote animal welfare.

For the first time this year the awards went to Sonya Young from RTK radio and Marika Mizzi from Net Television. Ms Young is the producer of a weekly phone-in programme on animal welfare. She has been promoting animal welfare and environmental awareness for the last five years. Her award-winning programme is called ’L-animali madwarna’ (’The animals around us’).

The winner of the best TV programme, Marika Mizzi, produced a series of 13 programmes about animal welfare. The programmes were partly filmed in the UK. The series of programmes called "Id-Dinja darna" ("The world is our house"), concentrated mainly on the problems facing animals in today’s world, with a strong focus on Malta. Marika Mizzi also produced animal welfare slots for other programmes that were aimed primarily at young people.

The presentation of the awards was made during the producers’ live programmes. Neither of them knew that they had won an award and they where both very surprised. Max Farrugia had arranged with the floor managers to make the presentations while thousands of Maltese viewers and listeners were tuning in. Both producers were very emotional when they received their awards. Marika Mizzi was so overwhelmed that she cried during the programme, while Sonya Young could not continue and someone else had to take over for some minutes while she recovered!

Max Farrugia said that the aim of the awards is to encourage other producers to make more programmes about animal welfare for Maltese listeners and viewers. The trophies were specially designed for the occasion by Mdina Glass Malta.

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