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SAV Media’s, Demelza Sampson, is hoping to help improve the lives of some of the most deprived children in Europe when she heads out to an orphanage in Bulgaria this Friday.  
Demelza, who works as Client Liaison Manager for SAV Media in Exeter, ITV’s Emmerdale and runs her own face painting business www.scrynaptic.weebly.com, is joining local charity The House of Rachel and staff and students from Okehampton College to spend a week at the Barzitsa Orphanage - which is home to around eighty 4-18 year olds - in a remote village in eastern Bulgaria. Whilst there they hope to build the children's confidence, motivation and self esteem and teach them new skills by running summer-school workshops in sports, crafts and music.  ‘The work we’re doing is so important’ said Demelza. ‘Summertime when they’re not at school is when the children are at their most vulnerable - so we’re helping to protect them from mixing with criminal gangs and getting into trouble whilst having fun and developing new skills along the way. I’m also planning on taking some of my face painting kit with me - it will be interesting to see what the children make of it!’
 
This visit comes after several previous successful trips run by the House of Rachel, including one to replace dilapidated windows and another to supply them with a minibus. Andrew Morgan, the charity’s founder, is delighted to be taking students and volunteers out to Bulgaria again stressing how much it means to the orphans to know that someone out there cares enough about them to keep coming back; 'The children and staff are deeply moved that we are prepared to travel the breadth of Europe to spend time playing with the children. It is impossible to put into words the value of the time we spend together and whilst it is intended as an act of giving, we gain so much more in return.'
 
But Demelza is not expecting this trip to be all fun and games: 'I can't wait to go but I also know that it's going to be a tough week as well as hopefully a rewarding one. Those kids will have been through such traumas in their short lives and staffing levels are pitifully low at the orphanage so they get very little love and attention. I think it will be a bit of an emotional roller coaster, challenging and with temperatures likely to be well over 30 degrees, it's going to be physically demanding too.'

As a direct result of the charity's work, the Bulgarian government has now taken notice of the poor provision for its country's orphans and has agreed to take over funding and completion of one of The House of Rachel renovation projects. In addition to this they also plan to build an extension to house a rehab centre for orphans with physical difficulties and a transition home for young adults to prepare them for life outside the state care system and better protect them from being the victims of criminal gangs, pimps and traffickers. This is the best possible result, allowing The House of Rachel to focus its resources on the many other improvement plans they have for the children. None of this valuable work could take place without the generous support of local people and businesses. If you would like to know more about The House of Rachel or wish to volunteer or donate please visit their website at www.houseofrachel.org.

Mark in BBC Radio Devon Exeter studio in 1984

I first walked into a local radio station in Exeter in November 1980.  DevonAir Radio was about to break the mould in the City and its mix of music and local news was welcomed with open arms. I was still at school, so my part time job involved working behind the scenes on the Saturday sport programme and making gallons of tea for presenters like Bob Kingsley, Paul Owens, John Pierce and Pete Barraclough.

By the time I move across to work at BBC Radio Devon’s Exeter studio when it launched in 1983 I was well and truly hooked. I knew that local broadcasting was something I cared passionately about and wanted to do as a full time career. I went away to train as a broadcast journalist and after a spell working for the BBC in the Midlands I came back to Radio Devon in the mid eighties as a reporter and producer, working alongside the likes of Jill Dando and Ben Bradshaw. They were extremely happy days working under the charismatic Liverpudlian manager of the station Roy Corlett. The newsroom was well funded and there was a real feeling that we covered local news and issues properly.  The stations balance of news, entertainment and music was just right and it reflected well in listening figures as a good alternative to Devonair.

I moved across from reading news, to fronting the station’s sport output and in 1989 joined Television South West. The studio at Derry’s Cross in Plymouth was full of people who’d worked two decades early at Westward Television, and it was amazing the number of viewers who still referred to the evening local news programme as the ‘Diary’... a name that had stopped being used many years previously.

It highlighted the affection people had then, and I believe still retain, for local broadcasting.

It may not be as strong as it once was, there may be a lot more rival channels and we might all be busier these days, but I still firmly believe that beneath it all, local people still want local news.

Perhaps we don’t like admitting that !  Maybe we don’t fight hard enough for it ! Could it be that we won’t realise just how much it means to us until it’s too late !

I worked in London at the beginning of the 1990’a for the football programme ‘Saint and Greavsie’. I enjoyed it, but after a while missed local broadcasting, and it was one of the main reasons why I decided to return home and join Westcountry TV when it took over from TSW in 1993.

Sadly two years ago, ITV shut its Plymouth studio and moved its Westcountry base to Bristol.  Heart Radio shows mostly come from London, and now it seems as if the BBC are considering scaling down its local radio operation and shutting those Exeter studios I first walked into 28 years ago.  The one hope I have for truly local broadcasting in the city is Exeter FM 107.3.  It still has some local shareholders.  Its presenters actually sit in an Exeter studio and talk about local issues.  Let’s pray that it, at least, gets even stronger as the others take a backwards step.

Clearly the advance of technology has had a major impact. As well as all those new tv channels, we can watch programmes on-line,  listen to any radio station we want on computers and read papers on ipad’s. Recently the Herald Express newspaper in Torbay made the decision to go weekly because of falling sales. I really hope that the Express and Echo doesn’t have to follow suit. I’d miss the daily read and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

I’m seriously worried about where we’re heading. In ten years time where will we get local news? Will we be totally reliant on blogs, twitter updates or the new craze that will be with us by then?  How will we ensure the impartiality that we’ve come to expect over the years from traditional newspapers radio and TV.

As local media outlets are eroded one by one, what can we do about it.? Is it inevitable that there will be none left in a decade? Is it already too late to reverse the decline.? I really hope not.  There really has to be a place for it in this modern and as I said earlier….we’ll desperately miss it when its gone !

Mark broadcasting on Hospital radio Exeter in 1983