People With Voices, a social enterprise that offers a low cost journalism training and an online platform for anyone to publish news, features, commentaries and reviews is seeking a new owner.
Deborah Gabriel, the existing director who founded the social enterprise in April 2009 is stepping down from the end of January 2012 to focus full time on her academic commitments at the University of Salford.
She currently teaches on undergraduate degree courses in journalism and media in addition to undertaking a PhD and has just completed the first year of her research project. Commenting on her decision she said:
Deborah Gabriel
“It is with deep regret that I am stepping down and I have not taken this decision likely but doing a PhD is a huge undertaking that requires 100 per cent commitment and I am simply unable to continue managing People With Voices as it takes up time that I no longer have available.”
Since its inception People With Voices has trained over 30 people in journalism and more than 25 contributors have had articles published on its news website. Ms Gabriel said that she has approached non-profit organizations to try and locate a new owner, emphasizing the importance of preserving the current legal structure.
“I sincerely hope that a new owner can be found, but in the event that this does not happen, People With Voices would have to cease operations. However, I will ensure that the website is preserved as an archive so that all of the articles that have been published to date will be preserved. The site has already been archived by The British Library,” Ms Gabriel added.
