Charlotte Turner, a post-graduate student in broadcast journalism from Cardiff University in Wales, is the first winner of the AFP-Peter Mackler Scholarship, the international news agency announced on Monday.

The scholarship was launched this year to honour the commitment to journalism training of veteran AFP journalist Peter Mackler, who died suddenly in June, 2008. Mackler, who was AFP North Americas chief editor at the time of his death, was a founding board member of the AFP Foundation, which runs training programmes for journalists in the developing world.

AFP runs a similar scholarship programme for French-language students. Applications for the new award for English-language journalism students were received from nine different nationalities studying at half-a-dozen British journalism colleges.

As the first winner of the award, Turner will work for AFP for one year from September in a London-based programme that will involve editing on the agency's international multimedia service and carrying our video and text reports. In a competitive field, Turner distinguished herself with an impressive news writing and editing test, well-produced short video news report, and interview skills.