AWJP/ICFJ West African Gender-based Violence Reporting Fellowship 2022

Apply for the AWJP/ICFJ West African Gender-based Violence Reporting Fellowship 2022  Journalists and writers from Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal are invited to apply for a specialised program that aims to examine and expose under-reported topics of violence against women.

Deadline

November 5, 2021

The Africa Women Journalism Project, an initiative supported by the International Centre for Journalists in partnership with the Ford Foundation West Africa, has opened a call in Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal to increase the capacity of women journalists to understand the complexity of gender-based violence and exploitation and empower them to cover gender-related issues. Through its program, the AWJP is looking for 60 women journalists interested in revealing the scale of gender-based violence in the target countries.

Benefits

• Successful participants will be able to apply for a 9-month Fellowship which will begin from January 2022 to September 2022.
• Fellows will receive microgrants to produce data-driven and collaborative reporting projects.
• Successful Fellows will also be eligible to apply for larger grants to support the production of more complex, data-driven and investigative reporting projects.
• Fellows will also be eligible to apply for grants to lead peer-to-peer training sessions in their own newsrooms where they can share their skills and knowledge thereby establishing themselves as experts in the field.
• Fellows will be assigned an experienced story mentor and will convene for regular webinars featuring experts in different fields to enable them to examine gender-related issues of relevance to their communities and how the pandemic is impacting development policies.
• Fellows’ stories will be shared on partner newsroom websites, with links on the Africa Women’s Journalism Project’s site as well.
• Successful Fellows and their newsroom affiliates will commit to publishing the stories on a monthly basis.

Stipend

• The 12 selected fellows will receive a stipend of USD$150 per month (dependent on producing a story a month) to support their reporting over the duration of the fellowship.

Eligibility

• Open only to women journalists in Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal;
• Applicants must be working journalists with at least three years of full-time, professional journalism experience.
• Applicants may be affiliated or freelance journalists.
• Applicants must speak, read and write English or French fluently in order to fully participate in and benefit from the Fellowship.
• All applicants must submit one story about under-explored issues concerning or intersecting with gender-based violence.
• Applicants will commit to publishing at least one story which they will produce within a month of completing the information and training sessions.
• Applicants must attend all webinars/information/training sessions scheduled during the program.
• Applicants who are successful in the Fellows’ selection process will commit to participating in monthly conversations with their assigned mentor.
• Successful applicants will be required to submit a blog of a minimum of 250 words about their experience and learnings from the program for publication on the partners’ and the AWJP websites.

Story Requirements

• The story must deal with gender-based violence in either of the targeted countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal).
• The story must be relevant to these countries and to the West African region.
• Must be well-written and compelling
• Must abide by the highest journalistic standards, eg multi-sourced
• Utilise data to effectively tell the story
• Include images/videos/graphics
• In-depth, investigative stories that provide new information or have a unique angle on the issue will be an advantage.
• Each story must be published within a month of receipt of the story grant and at the end of the information sessions.

Evaluation Criteria

The applications will be evaluated based on the following:

• relevance of the presented story
• feasibility, originality of the piece
• motivation expressed in the application and journalistic approach.

Application

Complete the application form in full no later than November 5, 2021.

Click here to apply

For more information, visit AWJP.