APPLY NOW: Earth Journalism Grants Fund

The Earth Journalism Grants Fund is available to support the creation, growth, and capacity of journalism organizations focused on reporting the human dimensions of climate change.

Those most vulnerable to climate impacts —often women, youth, and indigenous communities -- typically have the least influence on how respond to climate risks.  Despite bearing the least responsibility for the conditions accelerating climate change, vulnerable and under-represented populations are often the people with the most at stake.

This grant opportunity represents a challenge to journalists throughout the world to facilitate a responsive information ecosystem that more accurately and holistically reflects environmental challenges facing people across the planet.

WHAT TYPES OF PROJECTS DOES THIS GRANT OPPORTUNITY SUPPORT?

The Earth Journalism Grants Fund is focused on capacity and network building with flexible spending guidelines that enable local networks to invest in strategic opportunities, build the capacities of their members, and respond to communities’ needs.

Projects funded by this grant should have a strong thematic focus on climate change. Particular attention should be given to how climate change affects vulnerable and marginalized communities.  

While content production is an important aspect of any project, applications without some form of network- or capacity-building component will not be considered.  But if special opportunities arise, we are open to supporting fellowships and travel grants that support specific story ideas or coverage of key events, so long as these projects facilitate the creation of networks and/or are part of a training process.

Examples of previous grantee project:

·         Pakistan -- Pakistan's National Council of Environmental Journalists (NCEJ) focused their project on strengthening their network via the recruitment of new membership through training. NCEJ held 10 training workshops (classroom and field training) on the most crucial environmental issues – particularly those pertaining to water threats – facing Pakistan.  This series of trainings resulted in over 70 published stories and initiated a redesign of the NCEJ's official website, transforming it into an information hub for environmental journalists and a repository for stories produced as the result of the trainings.

·         In Tunisia, the Tunisian Environmental Reporting Network (TERN) was created through multiple activities, including training workshops, sponsoring members of the network to report from international environmental conferences, and working partnerships with fellow environmental journalists in other countries on the Mediterranean. To house the stories written by network members, this project set up an environmental news section of NAWAAT, an independent collective blog that aggregates media from a variety of sources to provide a forum for citizen journalists

WHO IS ELIGIBLE TO APPLY FOR THIS GRANT?

The Earth Journalism Grants fund is designed to support the establishment of environmental journalism networks in countries where they don't exist, and build their capacity where they do. Applicants should note their affiliations with existing media organizations or provide detailed plans about how this project would facilitate the creation of a new organization. 

As Internews is strictly a media development organization, please avoid any applications rooted in advocacy or political campaigning.

WHERE CAN THIS FUNDING BE USED?

We are predominantly focused on the developing world, where the need is often the greatest, but the pool of available resources is limited. However, we are open to proposals from anywhere, and in this case we would be interested in projects that focus reporting on the climate impacts on women, youth and indigenous peoples in countries that will play a leading role in international climate negotiations.

HOW MUCH FUNDING IS AVAILABLE FOR THE GRANTS?

This grant fund contains $50,000 USD and ideally will be allocated to 5 projects. While the average for each grant is approximately $10,000 USD, we can provide funding over the average for projects that demonstrates a critical need.  

The deadline for applications is May 15, 2015.

·         Grantees are expected to give their full cooperation in monitoring and evaluating the results of the projects, and are encouraged to submit their own monitoring and evaluation plan along with their application. The final monitoring and evaluation plan will be agreed upon by EJN and each individual grantee.

·         Applications should include a budget using this form

·         The projects are generally expected to take place this year, and we are particularly looking to see a lot of activity carried out prior to the COP21 Climate Summit held in early December, 2015. Final reports for accepted projects must be filed no later than Feb 10, 2016

·         Projects that can offer or raise co-financing to complement EJN’s support will be favorably viewed.

New EJN Members should register for an account before Applying.

Click here to Apply