Deadline: December 3, 2023
Applications are open for the Earth Journalism Network Asia-Pacific Media Grants 2024. This round of grants, awarded as part Internews’ Earth Journalism Network’s Asia-Pacific project, aims to boost the quantity and quality of environmental coverage in the region and engage at-risk communities by informing them about environmental issues and amplifying their voices in the media. This project has received generous financial support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).
Project Themes
In this round of media grants, they are seeking innovative ideas from journalist networks, media organizations, civil society organizations and academic institutions in Asia and the Pacific that would strengthen audience engagement and outreach of environmental reporting. They are interested in receiving applications for work that addresses the rise in climate and environmental news fatigue, and innovative ideas that promote better public engagement with environment and climate media.
They welcome projects that cover any environmental challenge that is salient to the region. Examples of themes include intensive food production, climate change, air and marine pollution, heavy metal contamination, antimicrobial resistance, pesticide poisoning and pollution, biodiversity loss, wildlife trafficking, natural resources management, and large-scale infrastructure development.
Examples of activities that can be supported include, but are not limited to:
- A media and communications campaign that highlights stories of climate resilience or other relevant themes.
- A media reporting project that explains and investigates the interdependence of the health and well-being of humans, animals, and their environments.
- Transboundary media reporting and content sharing among media/information outlets based in different localities or countries.
- Cross-sectoral collaborations and knowledge exchange between journalists, information providers and other key actors, such as researchers and governmental bodies.
- Partnership and network building for environmental reporting, such as the formation of an environmental journalists’ network or an investigative environmental reporting partnership.
- Innovative tools to support media investigations.
- Training opportunities and media workshops for journalists, citizen journalists or social media content producers.
- Institutional capacity building activities that build skills and knowledge on topics, such as but not limited to, financial reporting, monitoring and evaluation, gender inclusion, and in-person or virtual activities that support environmental reporting.
Objectives
Proposed activities should:
- Strengthen the capacity of journalists, media organizations, social media content producers to produce high-quality, evidence-based and engaging stories on the environmental impacts of human actions and viable solutions to mitigate and respond to these impacts.
- Increase high-quality content and media coverage on key environmental, public health and climate themes to focus public attention and trigger policy responses to these interconnected crises.
- Increase public attention to the disproportionate impacts of environmental degradation on women, the poor, youth, indigenous peoples, and other vulnerable groups and increase their access to high-quality, publicly available environmental information.
- Contribute to positive changes in government policies, businesses environmental standards or consumer habits for a more sustainable way of life.
Grant
- This grant fund has US$45,000 available for awards this year, which would ideally be shared among three to four projects. The grant amount can range between US$5,000 to US$15,000 depending on the scope of the proposed activities.
Eligibility
- Media organizations, journalist networks, universities and academic institutions focusing on environmental reporting in the Asia and Pacific region are welcome to apply. Civil society organizations, community-based groups and research institutes will also be considered – but only those with strong media and communication components that are dedicated to supporting fair and accurate environmental reporting. Please note that they will not consider applications rooted in advocacy or political campaigning.
- For the purpose of this call, they are only accepting applications from low-and-middle-income countries in the Asia-Pacific region. They are unfortunately, unable to accept applications from Nepal, Pakistan, and Central Asian or Middle Eastern countries.
- They will only be accepting applications in English. Unfortunately, they do not have the capacity to consider applications in other languages at this time.
- EJN reserves the right to disqualify applicants from consideration if they have been found to have engaged in unethical or improper professional conduct.
Judging Criteria
Grants will be awarded competitively through a judging process. The panel of judges will consist of Internews staff and experts in environmental reporting. Following a first-round review, potential grantees will be shortlisted. The jury may interview shortlisted applicants to seek further information on their proposed activities. The jury will then reconvene again after the interviews to make a final selection of the grantees.
The jury evaluates all eligible applications in a comparative context and makes funding decisions based on the availability of funds, the program objectives, and the following assessment criteria:
- overall quality of the proposal and effectiveness of the project design;
- relevance of the proposed project in contributing to the objectives and priorities of this grant program;
- potential of proposed project to bring about positive change;
- innovation of the proposed activities;
- financial viability and cost-effectiveness of the proposed project;
- the ability of the applicant to carry it out;
- geographical spread of the grantees.
Application
For more information, visit EJN Grants.
