Pulitzer Center

08/19/2023

We are thrilled to announce that our annual student letter-writing contest is now open!

The Local Letters for Global Change contest invites K-12 students worldwide to write a letter to a person in power that summarizes a global issue they believe should be a priority, explain how the issue relates to their local community, and propose a solution.

Through this contest, students can exercise writing and media literacy skills while exploring Pulitzer Center news stories, raising awareness about underreported issues that matter to them, and using their voices to inspire change.

Letters may be written in English or Spanish, and winners will be selected in high school, middle school, and elementary school categories. All finalists will have their letter, photo, and bio published on the Pulitzer Center website, and three first-place winners will receive cash prizes to support global community engagement in their classrooms (prizes will be distributed to teachers).

The Pulitzer Center’s K-12 Education team is also offering interactive, virtual workshops in both English and Spanish for classrooms, out-of-school-time programs, and other K-12 student groups to introduce the contest, analyze past winning entries, and get excited about letter-writing.

Read the full contest guidelines, explore resources for educators and students, schedule a free workshop, and submit your entry! All entries are due Sunday, November 12, 2023, by 11:59pm EST.

👉 http://pulitzercenter.org/localletters

08/18/2023

The forests of the Bolivian Amazon are depleting at an alarming rate. Their condition is dire as they face multiple threats to biodiversity. Developmental activities like road construction demand the clearing of large swathes of trees to make way for the Rurrenabaque-Riberalta route, which is being constructed through the northern Amazonian region of Bolivia. This road, undertaken by a Chinese company, spans 508 kilometers and is one of the longest sections being built in the country.

While this may seem like a step in the right direction to some, the Indigenous defenders of the Earth’s lungs are concerned about how it’s going to cause incorrigible destruction. The construction of the road will disturb the balance of flora and fauna and adversely impact the wetlands of the region. The experts say that any alteration to the flow of water in these wetlands may result in serious degradation of feeding and reproduction patterns of various species.

The Bolivian guardians of the rainforests are striving to protect their lands from large-scale agriculture and illegal mining. Despite their relentless efforts, an area equivalent to 1,057 soccer fields disappears each day. This rampant deforestation is accompanied by forest fires, river contamination from mining, and the encroachment of drug trafficking.

These invisible forest defenders face obstacles like defamation cases, threats from illegal loggers, and miners who work in tandem to halt their efforts. But this doesn’t shake their spirit and they continue to protect their Indigenous culture, Amazon’s biodiversity, and, in turn, the Earth.

Read the project “Bolivia’s Invisible Amazon and its Guardians who Do Not Give Up” by Pulitzer Center Amazon Rainforest Journalism Fund grantee Roberto Navia and photos by RJF grantees Karina Segovia and Lisa Corti for Revista Nómadas.

👉 https://bit.ly/3OB5EqG

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Los bosques de la Amazonia boliviana se están agotando a un ritmo alarmante. Su estado es crítico, ya que se enfrentan a múltiples amenazas para la biodiversidad. La ruta Rurrenabaque-Riberalta, que está en construcción exigen la tala de grandes extensiones de bosques amazónicos del norte de Bolivia.

Los pueblos indígenas que defienden y protegen este territorio están preocupados por daño incorregible que la construcción de esta carretera va a ocasionar. Ellos temen por que se destruya el equilibrio de la flora, la fauna y humedales de esta región. Expertos afirman que cualquier alteración del flujo de agua en estos humedales puede provocar una grave degradación de los patrones de alimentación y reproducción de diversas especies.

Además de los evidentes daños que va a ocasionar esta mega carretera, estos defensores de la Amazonía se enfrentan a multiples amenazas por parte de la agricultura a gran escala, la minería ilegal, tala ilegal y el narcotráfico. En Bolivia desaparecen diariamente bosques equivalentes a más de 1.000 campos de fútbol a causa de estas actividades.

The world's largest tropical rainforest, in Bolivia, is in danger: It is the victim of illegal deforestation and forest fires that destroy an average of 300,000 hectares of forest annually; of drug...

08/17/2023

TODAY! Join Eyewitness photography grantee Tara Pixley and author Vickie Vértiz in Boyle Heights for an evening (6:30pm-9:00pm PDT) of photography, poetry, community, and local fare. If you can’t make it, spread the word! We would love to see you there.

We'll be at Las Fotos Project. Get there: https://goo.gl/maps/HBtaLTfKuEW7k89Z8
2210 E Cesar E Chavez Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90033

Learn More: https://bit.ly/3Ok7vzQ

Register: https://bit.ly/45wdc4N

Meet the participants:
Tara Pixley is a q***r, Jamaican-American photojournalist and assistant professor of journalism at Temple University. She is also the executive director of Authority Collective, an organization by and for women/non-binary lens-based artists of color dedicated to establishing equity in visual media. Her photography reimagines race, gender, LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities through a liberation lens.

Vickie Vértiz is an award-winning poet, writer, educator, and advocate from southeast Los Angeles. Her first full collection of poetry, Palm Frond With Its Throat Cut, won a 2018 PEN America literary prize. Her latest book is titled Auto/Body. She teaches creative writing, writing for Chicanx studies, summer bridge writing for Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) students, and composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

08/16/2023

“I just don’t want to die,” pregnant Black women often tell midwife Victoria Buchanan, she says. “I just want to come out of here alive. I want to have a healthy baby. I want to be next to my kids.”

Research shows that Black women in the United States are three times more likely to suffer a pregnancy-related death than white women. Buchanan believes that she and the team at Sentara Midwifery Specialists in Hampton, Virginia, can keep new mothers and their babies healthy and defy the bleak statistics.

Advocates say they have seen how the holistic approach taken by midwives—listening to prospective parents, educating them, coordinating health care and performing home births—is linked to better health outcomes for women of color.

“We know that more outcomes in health care that tend to be the worst are in underserved, marginalized populations, and women often are in those particular populations,” said Amber Price, president of Sentara Williamsburg Regional Medical Center.

“There’s a national crisis around maternal mortality, and a big part of that is the concepts of racism and cultural nuances that make it so that the people providing the care often are miscommunicating with the patient … We wanted to make sure that the people who were in the group were representative of the community and had a unique skill set in connecting with the community.”

Photographer Karen Kasmauski followed the work of Black midwives between January and April this year in Virginia. Her series of photographs traces the relationships formed between midwives and their clients—from initial consultations and prenatal meetings to the birth and support in the months following pregnancy.

Read more in the photo story with text by Louis Hansen for Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism.

https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/i-just-dont-want-die-black-pregnant-women-are-turning-midwives-personalized-care-and-better

08/15/2023

How can students cultivate a curiosity for global issues and develop an ability to think critically about how and why stories are covered?

Educators from eight states and Washington, D.C., explored these questions and others as part of the 2022-23 Pulitzer Center Teacher Fellowship program. Over the course of the school year, Fellows created and implemented units that support students in developing curiosity about underreported local and global issues, practicing media literacy skills, and building empathy.

Designed for a range of courses, learning standards, and grade levels, the units cover issues of conflict and peacebuilding, global health, Indigenous communities, land and property rights, migration and refugees, and racial justice. Each unit includes a downloadable unit plan with daily lessons, teaching materials, evaluation rubrics, and examples of work by students who participated in the units, including short films, original websites, public service announcements, research papers, and more. Together, the units reached nearly 1,000 students last year, and we are excited to share this inspiring work for more educators and students to engage with and utilize in their own classrooms.

Explore all Teacher Fellow units and accompanying student work, and stay tuned for more information about applications for the 2023-24 Teacher Fellowship program launching this month!

👉 https://pulitzercenter.org/lesson-plan-grouping/teacherfellowship/askingcriticalquestions

08/14/2023

TODAY! Join Reporting Fellows Te Shima Brennen and Rajvi Desai, grantee Vijayta Lalwani, and q***r activists Maya Sharma and Keasha Houston to discuss q***r mentorships, families, and legacies.

Learn from their experiences and reporting.

Register now!
👉 http://bit.ly/3rUjhcV

08/11/2023

We are excited to present our Ocean Reporting Network's (ORN) first cohort of Fellows. This diverse and experienced group of eight journalists will spend a year investigating and reporting on key ocean topics.

The ORN Fellows will focus on issues from illegal fisheries in Indonesia and fossil fuel pollution in the Arabian Sea, to seaweed farming in the U.S. and the global shark market. Protecting our oceans, seas, and their ecosystems are vital in addressing the world's climate crisis.

“The Ocean Reporting Network is an initiative to foster the journalism we need now. In a moment of environmental crisis, of climate emergency, we need reporters and outlets collaborating with each other," says Gustavo Faleiros, Director of Environmental Investigations at Pulitzer Center.

The Ocean Reporting Network will follow the success and model of the Rainforest Investigations Network and the AI Accountability Network, which in the last three years have published a series of collaborative and data-driven investigations that were possible thanks to the support, training, and engagement provided by the Pulitzer Center.

“Dedicated ocean reporting is underfunded, and the topics are comparatively unreported. This is where the ORN can play a transformative role, supporting a collaborative ecosystem of journalists around the world who will systematically probe the drivers of the degradation of our marine environment across a range of topics, stories, and formats,” comments Jessica Aldred, Ocean Editor.

We invite you to get to know the Ocean Reporting Network's first cohort of Fellows and their reporting topics!
👉 https://bit.ly/OceanRptgNwk

08/10/2023

“[Hindu supremacists] have nurtured the dream that Muslims will leave the country, that they will go to Pakistan,” said Indian activist Umar Khalid, who is now imprisoned without a trial date for charges of sedition and terrorism.

“They have spread hate to make it happen. They have nothing but hate. But we will respond with love,” he told an audience at a protest before his imprisonment. “They are trying to provoke us. They are trying to start a riot. They are saying, ‘Shoot them.’ What are we saying? We are saying, ’There is no better place in the world than India.’”

Khalid rose to national prominence giving powerful speeches criticizing Modi and his far-right political party for leading a campaign of repression previously unseen in independent India. Khalid has compared Modi to India’s British colonizers, whose centuries-long stranglehold was enabled by policies that pitted religious and ethnic groups against each other, fueling mutual suspicion and resentment.

A target of the Modi government since he was a university student, Khalid was among the leaders of a broad-based movement that had emerged to protest the prime minister’s anti-Muslim policies—and the government was eager to squash its momentum.

Since Modi came to power in 2014, his government has wielded the law to target every kind of critic on every platform, from students expressing opinions on social media to human rights activists investigating atrocities. Between 2014 and 2020, more than 7,000 people were charged with sedition, according to a database published by Indian news site Article 14.

“These laws were already on the books—what we are seeing now is malice,” said journalist Aakar Patel. “This is a government that has weaponized the legal system to ensure that dissent is curbed through jail.”

Read more about Khalid’s imprisonment and what it means for the world’s largest democracy in this story by Sonia Faleiro for The Intercept.
👉 https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/dissident

08/09/2023

Happy International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples!
This year, The Pulitzer Center Rainforest Journalism Fund honors Indigenous youth as agents of change for self-determination, climate action, and justice.

In Brazil, Serra da Lua leads the way to save the Amazon. Indigenous youth thrive at Caracaranã Regional Center, where they preserve ancestral heritage and sustainable agriculture, guided by elders' wisdom.

Meet the resilient Indigenous youth of Twa, Africa's Congo Basin rainforest guardians. Since 2002, they've revived Gishwati Forest, protecting it from illegal activities and ensuring a flourishing biodiversity.

In Pitas, Malaysia, Indigenous villagers unite to reclaim their mangrove forests. Resisting commercial projects, they replant and defend nature, ensuring a legacy for future generations.

Let's celebrate and salute these inspiring Indigenous youth on this special day, as they safeguard our precious rainforests and combat climate change.

👉 https://rainforestjournalismfund.org

08/09/2023

The day Mother LaTravious Collins was diagnosed with acute kidney failure, she had an epiphany: “I’m me. I’m destined for greatness.”

She would spend the rest of her life supporting the Black trans community in Brooklyn, New York, as an advocate, Brooklyn Ghost Project nonprofit founder, and—in a role she prized more than anything else—chosen mother.

Watch the trailer for ‘Mother Wit,’ an upcoming documentary about Collins’ family and their pursuit of education and liberation at the link in bio.

Story by 2023 Columbia Journalism Reporting Fellows Te Shima Brennen and Rajvi Desai.
👉 https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/trailer-mother-wit

08/08/2023

Evaluating what journalists define as abnormal will help reframe the conversation around trans issues today. In the early stages of story development, considering the underlying experiences and whose voices are involved are key to accurately representing trans and non-binary experiences.

“You don’t need to be an expert on trans care to know if these are the right people to profile, because it’s a question of logic,” Gina Chua said.

Leading experts share more advice on how to frame reporting on trans communities in this webinar, hosted in collaboration with the Trans Journalists Association.

Watch the full recording! 👉 https://youtu.be/jn9tnKDIXds

08/04/2023

Want to understand the Amazon’s organized criminal groups and their operations?

Join Gustavo Faleiros, Director of Environmental Investigations for the Pulitzer Center, Bram Ebus, Rainforest Investigations Network Fellow, Rodrigo Pedroso, Rainforest Journalism Fund grantee, and Manaka Infante, program officer at the Open Society Foundations.

🗓️ August 7
⏰ 6 pm (GMT-3)

Register for our Zoom conversation! 👉 bit.ly/AmazonUnderworldZoom

08/03/2023

Tomorrow is the launch of , a journalistic series that reveals the criminal groups behind environmental devastation and threats against Indigenous peoples in the Amazon.

This cross-border investigative series brings together 37 journalists from across Latin America who for 15 months followed the criminal trail that puts the world’s most important tropical forest at risk.

A project of Armando.Info, Liga Contra El Silencio, and InfoAmazonia with support from the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network.

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Mañana es el lanzamiento de una serie periodística que revela a los grupos criminales detrás de la devastación ambiental y las amenazas contra los pueblos indígenas de la Amazonía.

Esta serie de investigaciones transfronterizas reúne a 37 periodistas de todo América Latina quienes durante 15 meses siguieron el rastro criminal que pone en riesgo al bosque tropical más importante del mundo.

Un proyecto de Armando.Info, Liga Contra El Silencio e InfoAmazonia con el apoyo del Rainforest Investigations Network del Pulitzer Center.

08/02/2023

For centuries, Indigenous coastal tribes of Louisiana have relied on their traditional ecological knowledge to adapt to life in a shifting environment. Their ancestral homes are vanishing due to Louisiana's receding coastline—the consequence of climate related erosion and hurricane destruction, exacerbated by the oil industry.

To learn more about Louisiana's Indigenous communities’ fight to restore the coast, join Pulitzer Center grantee Lorena O'Neil for a conversation on Tuesday, August 8 at 1:00pm CDT with Reporting Fellow Gina Castro, Elder Chief Shirell Parfait, Chief Devon Parfait, and climate scientist Alex Kolker.

Register for free!
👉 https://pulitzercenter.org/event/louisianas-disappearing-indigenous-lands

08/02/2023

Join Pulitzer Center alongside The Guardian and Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY for a special reception with the (NABJ) National Association of Black Journalists Global Task Force.

📅 Thursday, August 3
⏰ 8:30 pm - 10 pm

Attendees can enjoy food and networking.

Please register using the eventbrite link below.
👉 https://bit.ly/GlobalTaskForceReception

08/02/2023

Cada año, el Perú exporta cerca de USD 200 millones en productos de fibra de alpaca. El país es el primer productor global de esta fina fibra, que comercializa a través de una red de negocios que tiene como ejes principales a dos grupos económicos: Michell e Inca Tops. (In English below)

Sin embargo, en el primer eslabón de esta cadena productiva están los alpaqueros, familias que viven en las zonas altoandinas, en condiciones de pobreza, y que obtienen apenas USD 20 anuales por la esquila de cada uno de sus animales.

Las precarias ganancias de los alpaqueros se ven reducidas por la falta de capacitación, poca inversión estatal y mínimos recursos para contar con un rebaño más numeroso, pero también por los efectos de la crisis climática.

Según las mediciones históricas del Servicio Nacional de Meteorología e Hidrología (Senamhi) del Perú, a fines de 2022 e inicios de 2023, fueron los meses más secos de la región andina en los últimos 58 años.

Temperaturas inusuales e intensas heladas y sequías están matando a un mayor número de alpacas en estas regiones, dejando casi sin sustento económico a sus criadores.

Los invitamos a revisar este reportaje de los grantees Alessandro Cinque y Elizabeth Salazar publicado en OjoPúblico.

👉 https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/million-dollar-alpaca-route-foreign-luxury-andean-producers

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Each year, Peru exports close to USD $200 million in alpaca fiber products. The country is the world’s leading producer of this fine fiber, which is marketed through a business network whose main hubs are two economic groups: Michell and Inca Tops.

However, the first link in this production chain are the alpaqueros, families who live in the high Andean zones, in conditions of poverty, and who obtain around USD $20 per year for each of their alpacas.

The alpaqueros’ precarious earnings are affected by a lack of training, little government investment, and minimal resources for a larger herd. They’re also subject to the effects of the climate crisis.

According to historical measurements by Peru’s National Meteorology and Hydrology Service (Senamhi), the last quarter of 2022 and the first of 2023 were the driest months in the Andean region in the last 58 years.

Unusually high temperatures and intense frosts and droughts are killing a greater number of alpacas in these regions, leaving their breeders with almost no source of livelihood.

Check out this report by grantees Alessandro Cinque y Elizabeth Salazar.

08/01/2023

“The company is treating us like animals. Help us, I’m begging you,” says Arjun,* an Indian trafficking victim in Myanmar. In recent years, many concrete compounds have been built up along the Moei River, which separates Myanmar and Thailand. These buildings have become a hub for cybercrimes in Southeast Asia.

Chinese criminal organizations and local militias who control the area have captured thousands of men and women looking for honest work, subjecting them to human trafficking and exploitation. The victims, whose origins span several countries, are the workforce behind worldwide online scams and an illegal industry thought to be worth billions.

Here there is no one to enforce any type of protection or to assist the victims of the daily electrocutions, beatings, and other tortures people suffer. “They told us: ‘We can kill you here. This is Myanmar,’” said Jane,* a Filipino trafficking victim.

There are only three ways out of this outlawed place: Pay your way out of a contract, escape, or die. Survivors of these compounds believe that there are other criminal activities at play: The recent death of a 22-year-old Kenyan woman is evidence that organ harvesting may be taking place.

More on these reports by grantees Alastair McCready and Allegra Mendelson for South China Morning Post.

👉 https://pulitzercenter.org/projects/they-are-treating-us-animals-inside-myanmars-lawless-scam-mills

07/29/2023

“In Venezuela, amid an economic crisis profound,
AI data-labeling firms exploit labor, astound,
And ride-hailing drivers in Indonesia, they fight,
Against algorithmic control, their power ignites.”

-David Irving Davenport, 10th grade, Nansemond River High School, Virginia.

How does artificial intelligence appear in your everyday life? How can AI technology impact us on personal, local, and global levels?

As part of this year’s Fighting Words Poetry Contest, 83 students from across the world explored these questions and others as they created original poems based on reporting from the Pulitzer Center’s Artificial Intelligence Accountability Network.

Using lines from the reporting in their poetry, students thoughtfully reflected on the use and impact of AI and its intersections with issues such as worker safety, gender equity, racial justice, privacy, and misinformation. They also explore how AI functions in areas of education, surveillance, employment, medicine, and social media.

These poems further the work of the journalism that inspired them by holding space for the nuances of AI’s power and potential, emphasizing the technology’s human impacts and asking incisive questions about its role in our lives.

Head to the link in our bio to read a selection of these AI-inspired poems and explore more poetry from this year’s Fighting Words Poetry Contest.

https://pulitzercenter.org/blog/student-poets-examine-artificial-intelligence-accountability👉

07/28/2023

As part of the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention, Pulitzer Center grantees Ashonti Ford, Tara Pixley, Sarahbeth Maney, and Gavin McIntyre will join for a panel on the importance of visual storyteliing.

During their presentation they will share methodologies that allow the shift from breaking news to in-depth reporting and also explore the challenges and opportunities with visual storytelling.

📆 Friday, August 4
⏰ 10:30-11:30am CDT

More information 👉 https://bit.ly/NABJstPC

07/28/2023

Tomorrow, join grantee Michael O. Snyder for the opening of his ‘Queens of Queen City’ exhibit at the Saville Gallery in Cumberland, MD.

The event will feature an artist talk, panel discussion, and drag performances by Cumberland’s own queens.

👉 https://bit.ly/43D5CUM

07/28/2023

Turmeric’s popularity has expanded worldwide in the last decade, becoming an everyday health supplement for hundreds of millions. But consumers may have unknowingly purchased a contaminated product.

For decades, traders in South Asia have been adding lead chromate, a dangerous chemical compound, to turmeric to enhance its yellow color—and its market value. Fighting this type of food fraud is a difficult task that requires constant monitoring of complex international supply chains. Somehow, Bangladesh managed to reduce its lead-tainted turmeric to zero.

For years Mohammad Abdullah Sheikh, a turmeric trader in Ataikula, processed raw turmeric with a lead chromate powder to get the tubers to glow yellow. The locals refer to the compound as peuri, and nearly all the farmers and traders at the market are familiar with it.

Until recently, Sheikh didn’t know that lead chromate could lead to kidney and brain damage or cause developmental delays in children. Reaching farmers and traders was part of an outreach plan designed by a research scientist at Stanford University and Bangladesh’s Food Safety Authority. Their goal: to protect the country’s food supply from further lead exposure.

Grantee Wudan Yan tells the whole story of how Bangladesh ended food fraud in turmeric in this report for Undark Magazine.

👉 https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/vice-spice-confronting-lead-tainted-turmeric

07/26/2023

Pulitzer Center grantee Tony Bartelme’s project The Saharan Connection proves climate change knows no borders. Bartelme traveled to Senegal and Mauritania to document how meteorological phenomena across the Atlantic Ocean in the sands of the Sahara affect his city of Charleston, South Carolina.

In a new “Behind the Story,” Bartelme spoke to us about his inspiration for the project, his on-the-ground reporting in Senegal and Mauritania, and how he seeks to engage with a broader audience. In particular, he spotlights West African scientists doing groundbreaking research.

“…we really tried hard to talk to scientists on the ground, who live in West Africa,” Bartelme said. “Too often, journalists lean on people closest to them. And that all makes sense. But one of the most important aspects of this story was that scientists in West Africa weren't being heard. We wanted to rectify that.”

👉 https://pulitzercenter.org/blog/behind-story-saharan-connection

07/25/2023

TODAY! Join a new session of with Reporting Fellows Julia Knoerr, Olivia Diaz, and Dylan Ortiz to discuss how communities in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Immokalee, Florida, are fighting against food insecurity.

⏰ 5:30 PM EDT
For more info visit 👉 http://bit.ly/3NzYv9K

07/24/2023

It’s “the closest thing to drilling on the moon.”
That’s how an oilman in Alaska described drilling for fossil fuels in the Arctic. There’s a subterranean ocean of oil and gas there ready to be drilled. Climate advocates warn doing so will only add to the global crisis fueled by greenhouse gas emissions, but its utilization could also mean energy security for global superpowers, including the United States.

On Alaska’s North Slope, the question for the U.S. is not whether to drill, but how to do so in a manner that reconciles its strategic, local, and environmental interests.

Incentivized by rising gas prices from the Ukraine war, the White House recently approved ConocoPhillips’ Willow project, a new oil field in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, angering environmentalists but pleasing state leaders and delegates on both sides of the red-blue divide. While the Willow project is opposed by some on the North Slope, most prominently the mayor of Nuiqsut, the closest village, it appears to enjoy broad support among the Native Alaskan population.

“Their choice is not climate change or no climate change. It’s ‘Can we make money and afford to adapt or not?’” says Heather Exner-Pirot, an expert on the Arctic and its Indigenous populations, based in Canada.

However, some Alaskans have been warning against letting the state become a single product economy since the oil boom of the 1980s: “We’re much like a cannibal who consumes his own hindquarters and presumes he’s well fed and healthy simply because his belly’s full,” said then-Governor Jay Hammond.

Read more about how history is repeating itself in the Arctic in this story by grantees Liam Denning and Louie Palu for Bloomberg.

👉 https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/closest-thing-drilling-moon

07/22/2023

This summer, students aged 16-18 participated in an annual program to find local underreported issues in Chicago, and they produced their own short documentary films to highlight those issues.

The program, now in its fourteenth year, is part of a partnership between the Pulitzer Center and Free Spirit Media, an organization that provides opportunities for young creatives to explore the stories that are important to them by providing a comprehensive foundation in media production.

With the help of returning Pulitzer Center grantees Ashonti Ford and Eli Hiller, and a new mentor, Josee Molavi, students learned hands-on journalism and production skills to capture and share underreported stories in their local communities.

Students worked side-by-side with these journalist mentors to practice researching, interviewing, filming, and editing to bring their documentaries to life. Their projects focus on topics important to them and their local community, including dance and mental health, volunteering at animal shelters, arts education funding, and the role of beauty shops in creating community.

Stay tuned to watch their final documentaries coming this fall.
👉 http://pulitzercenter.org/education

Images courtesy of Ashonti Ford, Eli Hiller, Josee Molavi, and Terrance Patterson.