Fifteen journalism projects that will change the way you think about gender equality

In the latest round of funding, fifteen innovative journalism projects are set to change the way you think about gender equality…

Crossing The River — Women In Myanmar Fighting Maternal Mortality

Team: Emanuela Zuccalà (Project lead), Simona Ghizzoni, Alessandro D’Alfonso, Valeria De Berardinis
Description: This interactive web documentary follows the struggle for life of three midwives in Myanmar, where maternal mortality rate remains extremely high.
Project locations: Myanmar
Media outlets: New Internationalist (UK), Worldcrunch (FR), Le Courrier International (FR), OneWorld (NL), Burn Diary (US), Internazionale (IT), The Democratic Voice of Burma (Thailand)
Budget: €18,500.00

Rebelling And Rebuilding In Afghanistan: Stories of women fighting for their rights — and lives — in one of the most dangerous places on Earth

Team: Sophia Jones (Project lead), Sitara Sadaat, Kiana Hayeri
Description: This project intimately tells the stories of the women — especially mothers — struggling for their rights and a better future in a violent but changing Afghanistan, portraying them as active agents, not victims.
Project locations: Afghanistan
Media outlets: Public Radio International (co‐production of the BBC), De Correspondent (NL), Refinery 29 (DE)
Budget: €19,731.00

Where Women Make The Laws

Team: Alice Campaignolle (Project lead), Carlos Heras, Irene Escudero
Description: You will not expect Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, to have the most equalitarian parliament in the region and the second one in the world. But it does; more than 50% of the representatives in the national legislative assembly are women. Through a radio and audiovisual transmedia approach, this project portrays these Bolivian women and their challenges to document them to the world.
Project locations: Bolivia
Media outlets: TV5 Monde (FR), RTBF Transversales (BE), Cadena Ser (ES)
Budget: €15,400.00

Big Men: East Africa’s Unlikely Feminists

Team: Alice McCool (Project lead), Thierry Gatete, Brian Mutebi, Kevin Ouma, Charity Atukunda, Thomas Lewton
Description: From pastors to police officers, Big Men tells the unexpected stories of men in Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya who are defying gender stereotypes and/or fighting for female empowerment. The project does so by using a multi-media mix, including scrollytelling and illustrations.
Project locations: Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya
Media outlets: Vice (UK), Le Monde Afrique (FR), African Arguments (UK), Big Issue Kenya
Budget: €19,992.00

#Uburinganire! Conquering Gender Equality In Rwanda

Team: Caterina Clerici (Project lead), Eleonore Hamelin
Description: Since the end of the genocide, Rwanda has become Africa’s gender equality’s success story. We’ll follow women in their twenties — first time voters in the upcoming presidential election, raised according to this new gender equality narrative — to understand what empowerment means to them, in the fields of politics, education, or sexual and reproductive rights.
Project locations: Rwanda
Media outlets: Libération (FR), La Stampa (IT), TIME Magazine (US), Blue Chalk (US), akoma.net (Pan-African), Mail & Guardian (South Africa)
Budget: €20,450.00

Wives Of The Gods — Investigating Trokosi In West Africa

Team: Paul Myles (Project lead), Brigitte Perenyi, Angela Robson
Description: Wives of the gods is a project about one woman’s journey to investigate trokosi, a traditional practice in Togo and Ghana that forces women and girls into ritual servitude. How can gender equality be achieved whilst respecting the role of traditional practices?
Project locations: Togo, Ghana
Media outlets: BBC News (UK), Channel 4 News (UK)
Budget: €19,980.00

The #130MillionGirls Challenge — How Keeping Girls In School Can Save The World

Team: Peter Alestig Blomqvist (Project lead), Hanna Österberg, Frida Svensson, Pi Frisk
Description: Every day, for reasons such as sexual abuse, teenage pregnancy or war, 130 million girls are kept out of school. At the same time, research shows that female education is one of the keys for development. This project aims to portray this problem and solutions from different parts of the world, through in-depth journalism, an interactive online platform and a social media campaign.
Project locations: South Africa, Mozambique, Cameroon
Media outlets: Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden), Svenska Dagbladet Junior (Sweden), Berliner Zeitung (DE), Mail & Guardian (South Africa)
Budget: €20,000.00

Well-connected Women: Harnessing The Internet For Gender Equality In Pakistan

Team: Sophie Hemery (Project lead), Hasham Cheema
Description: Through in‐depth locally collaborative research, this projects tells the human stories behind a burgeoning online movement of Pakistani women rallying against sexism in the digital sphere, reclaiming their space online and harnessing the potential of the web.
Project locations: Pakistan
Media outlets: New Internationalist (UK), Vice Broadly (UK), openDemocracy (UK), Re:public magazine (Sweden)
Budget: €14,173.00

Manning Up

Team: Louise Donovan (Project lead), Hannah O’Neill
Description: This project explores how men are actively engaging alongside women in the fight for women’s rights worldwide, from challenging sexual and domestic violence in South America and Lebanon, to family planning and FGM in Kenya. The in-depth written features will be accompanied by video, photo and audio content.
Project locations: Lebanon, Kenya, Colombia, Brazil
Media outlets: Vice (UK), Vice Broadly (UK), Bild (DE), BBC World Service (UK)
Budget: €22,550.00

A Girls’ Game: The Unlevel Playing Field Of Women’s Football

Team: Mariangela Maturi (Project lead) Irene Caselli, Claudia Jardim, Kaddijatou Jawo
Description: “It’s a boys’ game.” But what happens when a girl feels passionate about football? Three unique stories illustrate the challenges women footballers face. The reporting includes a multilingual online resource where girls and women can learn from other experiences and become more empowered.
Project locations: Gambia, Brazil, UK, Sweden
Media outlets: BBC Online (UK), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (DE), Sveriges Radio (Sweden), Re:public Magazine (Sweden), Worldcrunch (FR), Internazionale (IT), Opzij (NL), RSI radio (Switzerland), The Point (The Gambia), Agencia Publica (Brazil)
Budget: €20,450.00

Medicamentalia — Contraceptives: The Birth Control Gap

Team: Eva Belmonte (Project lead), Veronica Ramírez, David Cabo Calderón, Miguel Ángel Gavilanes, Raúl Díaz Poblete, Javier de Vega
Description: In 2016, 142 million women had an unmet need for modern methods of contraception, and 73% of them lived in the world’s poorest countries. This project investigates this problem using a unique combination of in‐depth data journalism and personal storytelling.
Project locations: Equatorial Guinea, Uganda, Laos
Media outlets: One World Magazine (NL), Correctiv (DE), Infolibre (Spain), MO* Magazine (BE), La Sexta Noticias (ES)
Budget: €20,360.00

“We would never have started our first international project without the help of Journalism Grants. Our first grant allowed us to go beyond borders and create a huge international project, Medicamentalia, the investigation that more happiness bring us so far: we won the Data Journalism Award and the Gabriel García Márquez Award. And we could continue investigating the area in the second phase thanks to our second grant!” — Eva Belmonte

Till Death Us Do Part: The Child Brides Of Climate Change

Team: Gethin Chamberlain (Project lead), Maria Udrescu, Miriam Beller
Description: This project investigates how global warming has sent rates of child marriage soaring in some of the world’s poorest countries. The results are presented in an innovative format, including 360 video, drone work, data journalism and mapping.
Project locations: Mozambique, Malawi
Media outlets: Sunday Mirror (UK), Marie Claire (UK), Mirrorpix (UK), Ze.tt (DE), Verdade (Mozambique), The Nation (Malawi)
Budget: €19,833.00

Dangerous Abortions: Why Women In Nepal And Cambodia Are Choosing Back Alleys Over Legal Clinics

Team: Tara Todras-Whitehill (Project lead), Rojita Adhikari, Chandan Jha, Marta Kasztelan, Sukummono Khan, Matt Ford, Jack Zahora
Description: Why do a large number of women in Nepal and Cambodia undergo banned procedures to end their pregnancies, when abortion is legal in both countries? This project aims to let the women answer and tell their stories to a mass audience through text, photos, video, audio and data visualizations.
Project locations: Nepal, Cambodia
Media outlets: Suddeutsche Zeitung (DE), Witness (NL), Buzzfeed News (US), CNN International (US)
Budget: €20,000.00

When Women Rule

Team: Liz Mermin (Project lead), Belinda Goldsmith, Valeria Cardi, Katy Migiro, Kiearn Gilbert, Anastasia Maloney, Heba Kanso, Nita Bhalla
Description: The multimedia package explores the challenges women politicians across the developing world are taking on, the variety of obstacles they face, and the difference they make in an effort to answer the question: what happens when women rule?
Project locations: Bolivia, Papua New Guinea, Lebanon, Kenya, India, The Gambia
Media outlets: news.trust.org (UK), The New Statesman (UK), Internazionale (IT), MO* Magazine (BE), TIME Magazine (US)
Budget: €21,899.00

Coding Like A Girl

Team: Javier Sauras (Project lead), Michele Bertelli, Felix Lill, Abdi Latif Dahir
Description: Many African and Latin American countries are hastily closing the gender gap in the IT workforce. This project will examine successful projects in Rwanda and Peru and both scrutinise their impact on local development, and as well as compare them globally with similar programs from developed economies like Germany.
Project locations: Rwanda, Peru, Germany
Media outlets: Der Spiegel (DE), Quartz Africa (Kenya), El País (ES)
Budget: €20,000.00

Now it’s your turn…

The above winners were chosen because of their solid story ideas operating on the crossroads between investigative, data-driven and visual journalism. To convey complex development stories in engaging ways, the winning projects will make use of web documentaries, graphic animations, 360-degree videos, drone and data journalism and more.

The awarded projects have received endorsement from significant media outlets such as BBC, Bild, Buzzfeed News, Channel 4 News, CNN International, De Correspondent, Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Libération, Marie Claire, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Sunday Mirror, Svenska Dagbladet, The New Statesman, Time Magazine, TV5Monde, Vice, and many others. The grant project is supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

To apply for the next grants round on the topic of food and development, click here.

“I have been developing projects within the programme since 2013, and as a veteran grantee I can tell that the knowledge I gained is priceless. Journalism Grants had a unique impact on my life as journalist, because it let me combine my passion for stories with cutting edge innovation. The challenges pushed the envelope of my attitude as a journalist, technologist and human being.” — Jacopo Ottaviani