Four more solution-focused stories from our grantees

In the previous blog post, we featured five of these projects and now, we bring you four more from the same cohort. 

Ein Land im Aufbruch/A country on the move - Future lab India - brand eins (Germany)

One in five people on the planet now lives in India. The world's largest democracy is becoming increasingly important internationally. Business magazine brand eins published a long-read series focusing on India, with a rapidly growing middle class and an energy demand that is expected to double in the next 15 years. Their project explores the great upheavals that India is currently going through and follows the people who are navigating these changes. The series aims to show how India’s society and economy are already working to solve many of the burning issues of our time, such as climate change adaptation, urbanisation, water conservation, and sustainable food supply.

They would like to highlight Motilal Kanojia's story from their series.

We are particularly proud of this story because it represents the core values of our magazine: That individuals are the smallest economic unit, and that to understand economics, you need to listen not just to analysts and experts, but to everyday people and their economic struggles. We like this story because we had the chance to reconnect with our protagonist, Motilal Kanojia, whose economic and personal development we have been following since 2019. His story gave us the opportunity to make the major economic and social changes in Indian society visible and understandable to a European audience. Motilal Kanojia's story shows the big societal changes of digitalisation  in India from the perspective of a struggling day labourer working on the streets of Mumbai - the success and the dark side of change.

-Holger Fröhlich & Julia Lauter, brand eins

You can find all stories from their project here:

German

English

African Changemakers - SciDev.Net (UK)

In their series, SciDev.Net talks to innovators changing lives across Africa. They explore how talented Africans are producing solutions to the problems faced by their communities, taking change into their own hands. The podcast episodes in both English and French - tell the unreported stories of individuals who have been inspired to transform their communities by tackling societal challenges such as gender inequality, poor health, or under-nourishment in innovative ways.    

Their favourite story is the one about a table to warm babies at birth.

This episode exactly encapsulates what we were trying to achieve at SciDev.Net. It tells the story of Elisée Fadé, a technician who decided to make his own incubator after realising that hospitals in his country of Benin could not afford expensive imports. The story gives a wide range of viewpoints and shows how innovators such as Fadé can use their knowledge to make a significant difference to people’s lives.

-Ben Deighton, SciDev.Net

You can find all podcasts from their project here: English , French

Sur la Terre - Anthropocene: Voices of the Global South - Agence France-Press & The Conversation (France)

We have entered a new geological period, the Anthropocene, or “era of humans”. This new era is defined by the overwhelming impact of our species on the planet and underscores the urgent need to transition to an equitably sustainable future. This series explores solutions to facilitate the ecological transition and is in search of new points of view on ways to preserve life, particularly from emerging countries and indigenous peoples. The series consists of podcasts by AFP and texts written by academics published by The Conversation.

AFP’s favourite story is the one about traditional ecological knowledge and education as a systemic way to fight against the climate and biodiversity crisis.

The story is a real story of interaction between the Global South and the Global North.  It starts with the story of the Kogi people in Colombia, who honour Earth as a living being and are known for their knowledge of ecosystems. Their story was first told in a BBC documentary where as soon as 1990 they alerted the world of the dire consequences of the extractive economy.  Since then, scientists in the Global North have started studying their nature conservation methods and noticed they can be very efficient to restore ecosystems. This is part of a deeper trend to understand how traditional ecological knowledge can help.

-Michaëla Cancela-Kieffer

The Conversation proposes their story on phytoremediation, written in collaboration with plant biotechnology and physiology researchers Mouna Fahr and Abdelaziz Smouni. 

For me, it's a subject that lends itself very well to SoJo. It's a subject that also allowed us to evoke scientific work from both the North and South. I particularly liked being able to evoke the genesis of phytoremediation (post-Chernobyl concerns) because it shows that, while the Sojo framework is recent, it can be applied to older initiatives.

-Gabrielle Maréchaux, The Conversation

You can find all podcasts from their project: afp.com , Acast

Climate Guardians - BBC Future Planet (UK)

BBC Future Plane’s series spotlights the stories of those who know the problem best - the women and indigenous communities in the Global South on the frontlines of the climate crisis. They are creating effective solutions that can help untangle the network of inequalities, to make a healthier, safer, more sustainable community for all. ‘Climate Guardians’ uses an intersectional reporting lens to investigate the ways effective climate solutions can address linked problems of gender inequality, food insecurity, health and poverty.

They are particularly proud of their fantastic video, story and gallery by Nepalese filmmaker Shanta Nepali and journalist and photographer Tulsi Rauniyar about the effects of drought on a community in Nepal.

They tell the poignant story of a community in Nepal’s Himalayas which was forced to relocate due to prolonged drought. This was a difficult story to tell – it involved driving more than 400 km (as they do not allow flying) to Upper Mustang and spending 10 days speaking to families who had been forced to leave behind their ancestral homes and livelihoods due to climate change. Shanta and Tulsi’s evocative storytelling highlight the stark reality facing many communities in climate-vulnerable regions: should they stay as climate threats mount or leave behind their homes, culture and jobs to start again?

-Isabelle Gerretsen, BBC Future Planet

You can find all stories from their project here

---

Read more about the first five projects of the cohort

Interested in finding out what the grantees of the first selection of grantees wrote? Read more about it here:

• 5 impactful stories from our Solutions Journalism Accelerator grantees
• Solutions Journalism Accelerator grantees: 5 positive change stories

The Solutions Journalism Accelerator is a programme delivering grant funding, mentoring, coaching, resources and knowledge transfer to support solutions-focused development journalism in European news organisations. 

(Header Image Credit: from the article "Inside the exquisite Tibetan monasteries salvaged from climate change")