First Jill Dando News Graduate Celebrates Expansion of Feel-Good School Newsroom Project
By Jill Dando News
The first-ever graduate of the Jill Dando News Network has praised the rapid expansion of the Good News Room project, calling it a life-changing scheme that is now spreading positivity across schools, communities, and the world.
Olivia, 21, now studying medicine at Bristol University joined Jill Dando News aged 12 at Worle School, the former school of BBC presenter Jill Dando.
She continued in it then at King Alfred School where their reporters were interviewed by Boris Johnson.
Within a few years she was reporting for BBC TV News, appearing on Good Morning Britain, covering world events, and helping dozens of young reporters interview presenter Fiona Bruce.
“I never imagined I’d end up on Good Morning Britain, speaking on the BBC or interviewing astronauts and people like Fiona Bruce,” she said.
She described her most memorable moment during a live broadcast in Glasgow:
“It was 5am, freezing cold, and I was about to go live across the UK. That’s when I realised how many doors Jill Dando News had opened—and how much I’d grown.”
Olivia also coined the phrase that has since become central to the project’s ethos:
“Jill was the smiling face of Britain.” She trained a newsroom team with the motto ‘all things are possible’ with one of them going to Downing Street to interview the Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The Good News Room scheme was founded by the Good News Post.
Children run their own newsroom trained by professional journalists and report uplifting, real-life stories including promoting the work of charities, schools and inspirational people. It has expanded across the UK and internationally in Malawi.
The project helps pupils develop, literacy, aspiration, confidence, communication, digital skills and wellbeing, while promoting the kindness and professionalism lived by with Jill Dando.
The initiative began in 2011 in a headteacher’s office and has since grown into an expanding network of young reporters aged 4 to 21.
Founder of the Good News Post and former journalist Shane Dean said:
“Olivia shows that all things are possible. This project is about putting a smile back on students, their schools, their communities and even the wider world. That positivity is a massive part of what makes this feel-good newsroom project so important.”
Headteacher of Worle School, Mark Tidman, said:
“Olivia and the hundreds of others have been tremendous. The project has genuinely changed lives, and we are proud it began here in Jill’s former school.”
