Deadline: 14-Sep-20
In its second year of execution, the Fund for Investigations and New Narratives on Drugs (FINND), which arises from the alliance between the Gabo Foundation and Open Society Foundations (OSF), is consolidated as a grant program to support and promote journalistic work innovative, that address with rigor, ethics, and quality the challenges, challenges, and opportunities related to drug policies in Latin America.
Aware of the impact and profound consequences that the COVID-19 crisis has had in the world, this second edition of FINND seeks to stimulate proposals that analyze, from innovative approaches, the intersection between phenomena related to drugs declared illegal and human rights issues, violence, public health, social policy and other lines of investigation framed in the context of the crisis derived from the coronavirus.
The call is open in the categories of investigative journalism, local journalism, innovative journalism, and collaborative journalism. Likewise, the proposals can propose text, video, web, documentary, sound journalism, or photography products —or a combination of various formats. In this sense, proposals that seek to develop non-traditional or innovative journalistic formats, such as journalistic satire, ‘story telling’, or others, are also accepted.
Funding Information
- The Fund will award between 15 and 22 scholarships, ranging between 2,000 and 6,000 dollars each, aimed at people who work as ‘freelance’ journalists or who have permanent ties, or in collaboration, with the media in Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, and Mexico.
Topics
Proposals for journalistic works must be framed in the following topics:
- Public health: new challenges generated by the COVID-19 emergency for drug users. Innovation in the field of scientific research, pharmaceutical applications, care for people with problematic uses (harm reduction) and nutritional uses.
- Regulatory and normative frameworks: changes in legislation and their impacts on illicit producers, users, and economies. Analysis of regulatory frameworks and the possibilities for developing industries around non-narcotic uses of plants traditionally processed for the production of illicit drugs.
- Human rights: anti-drug policies, the vulnerability of minorities, urban drug markets, prisons, repression and militarization, governance, and narco politics. The coronavirus pandemic as an aggravating factor and facilitator in human rights violations and the impact on the social rule of law in drug-related contexts.
- Gender: how the effects of COVID-19 can accentuate gender inequalities and multiply violence against women and youth. Stories of female empowerment and agency in drug-related contexts.
- Ethnic-cultural approach: research that involves traditional or nutritional uses that indigenous groups or ancestral communities give to some plants with potential illicit use. Social and environmental impacts of the war on drugs in ethnic territories.
- Environment: deforestation, pollution, environmental effects of drug policies.
- Rural dimension: crops declared illegal, producing communities, territorial development, illegal economies, impacts of forced eradication policies. The effects of COVID-19 on the rural dynamics of the phenomena associated with the illicit drug market.
Categories
Regardless of the subject matter of the projects that apply to the Fund, proposals must fall within one of the following three categories:
- Investigative journalism: the application must contain a hypothesis and investigation proposal, and a plan to develop the topic in text, sound journalism (radio, podcast, or other), video, photography, or new formats.
- Local journalism: this category applies to those participants who propose journalistic projects of departmental, provincial, or hyperlocal scope. The proposed project should focus on dynamics that affect the regions where journalists live and / or work, and projects with a strong component of solutions journalism will be prioritized.
- Innovative journalism: proposals in this category must explain how they will use formats that help to narrate in an innovative way the results of journalistic investigation. The new formats include – but are not limited to – multimedia documentaries, video editorials, projects with components of collaborative journalism with audiences, journalistic satire, ‘scrollytelling’, and any other non-traditional journalistic format.
- Collaborative journalism: projects that promote collaborative journalism will be positively valued, especially those that contemplate alliances between journalists who develop their work from main cities with local reporters and researchers, or members of the community or regional media, as well as communication groups.
Eligibility Criteria
- The call is open to people who work as journalists and who work in text, sound, photography, video or other formats.
- Applications from people who carry out their research as ‘freelance’ or who have permanent links or in collaboration with the media in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru are accepted.
- Individual or collective applications are allowed, appointing one of the main persons in charge of the project.
Selection Criteria
Proposals will be reviewed in three rounds by judges, the Directorate of the Gabo Foundation journalism workshop, and the academic director of the project. By Foundation policies, the selection process carried out by the evaluation committee is reserved.
- Among others, the FINND juries will take into account the feasibility of the proposal, the innovation in the proposed narrative, the originality of the topic, the relevance and expected impact of the research, and its dissemination plan in an established medium, in particular audiences and on social networks.
- The Fund will have a pre-selection round in which journalists may be contacted by call or email to resolve doubts or concerns from the jurors.
For more information, visit https://fundaciongabo.org/es/actividad/fondo-para-investigaciones-y-nuevas-narrativas-sobre-drogas-segunda-edicion