Joy Ikekhua (Spelman College) poses a question to the global health panel. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
The Pulitzer Center hosted its fifth annual Campus Consortium Student Fellows Washington Weekend on Friday, October 26, and Saturday, October 27, 2018.
Tomas Woodall Posada (Forsyth Technical Community College), Kiley Price (Wake Forest University), Meg Vatterott (University of Missouri), and Jacqueline Flynn (Texas Christian University) present on climate change and the environment. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
Meg Vatterott (University of Missouri) presents her global reporting project at 2018 Washington Weekend. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
Tomas Woodall Posada (Forsyth Technical Community College) presents his global reporting project at 2018 Washington Weekend. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
Rohan Naik (Yale University), Tomas Woodall Posada (Forsyth Technical Community College), Kiley Price (Wake Forest University), Meg Vatterott (University of Missouri), and Jacqueline Flynn (Texas Christian University) present on climate change and the environment. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
Jacqueline Flynn (Texas Christian University) presents her global reporting project at 2018 Washington Weekend. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
Kadia Goba (Hunter College) presents her global reporting project at Washington Weekend. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
Pulitzer Center contributing editor Kem Sawyer poses a question to the climate change and the environment panel. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
A biology major with a passion for protecting the environment, Kiley Price (Wake Forest University) is always on the lookout for creative conservation methods. "I've seen machines that are pulling Co2 from the air and bioacoustic sensors that are monitoring ecosystem health," she said, "but probably the most unique strategy I've ever come in contact with is something called 'tree ordination,'" a ceremony performed as part of the spiritual activism of "ecology monks." In multimedia reporting published in Mongabay, Pacific Standard, and Asian Correspondent, Price showed how Buddhist monks in Thailand are harnessing their influential status to emphasize the moral dimension of conservation.
In Puerto Rico, different forces have arisen in response to climate change: volunteer brigades. The island has been hard-hit by intensifying hurricanes in recent years. "[September 2017's Hurricane Maria] was a very traumatic experience for many people on the island," said Tomas Woodall Posada (Forsyth Technical Community College). "I remember a faculty member at the University of Puerto Rico describing the storm as a bomb going off almost continuously." Federal government provisions were scant. Woodall Posada focused his stories on the people who banded together and volunteered their time, energy, and ingenuity to feed and provide power to the people.
Jacqueline Flynn (Texas Christian University) reported on a more gradually unfolding crisis. With increasing demand caused by rural-urban migration, Cape Town knew well in advance that the city was going to run out of water. "This was an issue that was exhaustively reported on," Flynn noted, "but what I noticed was a lot of the articles were talking about what was going to happen when the taps turned off and not a lot of people were talking about why the taps were turning off, and what we could be doing to prevent this from happening in other places." Flynn's story for Global Health NOW draws lessons for the U.S. and other countries the world over.
Meg Vatterott (University of Missouri) told the story of a different kind of water crisis and the inequitable distribution of its consequences. Forty percent of Mexico City's water supply, she reported, is imported, much of it coming from a water treatment system that has operated for the past 30 years in a rural community outside of the city. While the local water reserves are exhausted and exported, the mostly indigenous Mazahua residents lack running water in their own homes, walk miles to fetch what they need to drink, cook, and bathe, and wage a continuous struggle to gain access to the water system that benefits urbanites while bypassing them. Her article and her documentary introduce some of the people impacted by the water crisis and those working to change the Mazahua's lot.
Rohan Naik (Yale University) closed the panel with an exploration of the history and contemporary challenges of smog in London, a problem leading to about 40,000 premature deaths every year. "Often when we talk about environmental issues, and especially climate change," Naik posited, "we're referring to places in the Global South, but obviously climate change and air pollution are two issues that affect everyone everywhere." Naik's story, published in Pacific Standard, looks at the way smog affects communities of color, the efforts that have been made to address the issue, and what's at stake as Britain faces the reality of leaving the EU and climate change intensifies.
When Kadia Goba applied for her Pulitzer Center grant, she knew she wanted to report on the landslides plaguing Sierra Leone. She zeroed in on a solutions journalism approach, looking at "what people are doing a year after the landslides in 2017." Published in Pacific Standard, Goba's story explores how deforestation and development have led to this series of natural disasters, and how local actors are combating the expansion of these practices.
Flaviana Sandoval (Boston University) presents her global reporting project at 2018 Washington Weekend. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
Alexis Smith (City Colleges of Chicago) presents her global reporting project at 2018 Washington Weekend. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
Amanda Gordon (Westchester Community College) presents her global reporting project at 2018 Washington Weekend. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
Merdie Nzanga (Howard University) presents her global reporting project at Washington Weekend. Image by Karena Phan. United States, 2018.
Julie De Meulemeester (McGill University) presents her global reporting project at 2018 Washington Weekend. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
Pulitzer Center executive editor Indira Lakshmanan poses a question to the global health panel. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
McGill University medical student Julie De Meulemeester traveled to the remote Canadian Arctic town of Nunavut, where 70 percent of preschoolers live in a food insecure household. Her reporting started out with a challenge: extremely high travel costs. "Understanding the barrier of even just visiting," De Meulemeester asserted, "is a step in understanding food insecurity in the north to begin with." Her Global Health NOW story aimed to examine the impact of hunger on health in the region.
Following her passion for women's issues, Merdie Nzanga (Howard University) shared reporting plans for a story about the implementation of the Kenyan government's 2011 law banning female genital mutilation (FGM). Nzanga has found a disconnect between the law's proponents and community elders who favor the traditional practice. She intends to interview not only the lawyers, police, and activists looking to end FGM, but also those on the opposite side of the debate, such as a doctor who "believes that by placing this ban, you are basically taking away women's rights." "Those of us in the West have always looked at FGM as an issue but we don't know that cultural side of it," Nzanga noted.
The audience listens to student fellows present their global reporting projects at Washington Weekend. Image by Karena Phan. United States, 2018.
Sarah Hoenicke (University of California Berkeley) presents her global reporting project at Washington Weekend. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
AJ Naddaff (Davidson College) presents his global reporting project at Washington Weekend. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
Jared Olson (Flagler College) presents his global reporting project at Washington Weekend. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
Julia Friedmann (Georgetown University) presents her global reporting project at Washington Weekend. Image by Jin Ding. United States, 2018.
Beyond War fellow Julia Canney (College of William & Mary), who holds a masters degree in Human Rights from University College Dublin, reported on the legacy of Northern Ireland's Troubles 20 years after the Good Friday Agreement. Her story focuses on the women running vital programs for peacebuilding and mental health, who she says are often written out of history. "These women are holding the country together," Canney declared, "and in the face of Brexit and further delay in the government, they're not going to be able to do it for much longer without a change in resources and the ways that things are run."
As he set out to add nuance to the body of journalism exploring how countries can combat Jihadism, AJ Naddaff (Davidson College) did a lot of self-reflection. "There's been so much probing from the West of 'What is Islam? What is Jihad?'" that Naddaff asked himself: "Am I just going to feed into these narratives?" Through research, dogged reporting, and collaboration with local fixers and sources, however, Naddaff uncovered unique angles on this story, investigating why people in Kosovo join ISIS, and how the state handles reintegration of ex-combatants. His reporting has been published in The Washington Post and World Politics Review.
Jared Olson (Flagler College) spent six weeks reporting from the Zapatista autonomous zone in Chiapas, where "the government obeys and the people command." The 25-year-old movement ran their first presidential candidate in Mexico's 2018 elections, and Olson's stories follow how their ideology and organization has evolved over time. While members of the movement, historically marginalized, were suspicious of his presence at first, Olson found that dedicating a longer period of time to building trust and relationships allowed him to tell a fuller story.
As Colombia moves forward with the 2016 accords closing what was the longest-running civil conflict in the Western Hemisphere, Julia Friedmann (Georgetown University) traveled to report on how religious organizations are involved in the peace process. In her reporting, published by Religion News Service, Friedmann explores the Jesuits' role in the reintegration of members of the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), supporting internally displaced people, and building toward reconciliation within communities.
"People usually know one story about Sri Lanka," Beyond War fellow Sarah Hoenicke said at the start of her presentation. "They know that there was a really, really long ethnic conflict there, and that life has been hard for the people as a result. What they don't know is that reconciliation efforts started early and have continued to this day, and have taken some forms that might surprise you." Taking a close look at these lesser-known methods of peacebuilding, Hoenicke plans to focus her reporting on how Sri Lankan youth have been "writing through trauma," bridging linguistic differences and the divides wrought by decades of conflict through literature.