Deadline: 16-Aug-23
Impact Seed Funding (ISF) is a micro-scale grant provided by the Pulitzer Center to finance education activities with the aim to enrich the perspectives and knowledge of the university community—specifically students and educators—about the problems, solutions, and innovations related to the impact of human activities in tropical forests and the climate crisis.
Pulitzer Center aims to support projects that inspire changes in perspectives, narratives, and actions among communities as its ultimate impact. In this way, the main goal of the grant is to create more informed and empathetic communities about the underreported issues of the rainforest and climate change. The ISF is designed to be flexible and responsive to the needs of educators and communities, allowing applicants to establish activities related to pressing issues of the rainforest and the climate crisis. The ISF was launched in 2022 in Indonesia. Due to the initiative’s success, they have expanded the regional scope to also include the Amazon in 2023.
Goals
- They believe in the power of knowledge and the role of education and educators in addressing multidisciplinary problems in rainforest regions and the climate crisis. Therefore, the ISF is designed to provide seed funding to educators in Southeast Asia and the Amazon to raise awareness of pressing tropical forests and climate issues among communities in both regions. The ISF provides micro-scale support to:
- Initiate new collaborations or build on existing collaborations between professors, researchers, students, and journalists;
- Increase engagement between educational communities, journalists, and indigenous and traditional populations;
- Encourage the use of creative images (e.g., photographs, short videos, documentaries, podcasts), data images, and information from the reports in teaching materials, student activities, curricular and classroom materials, or scientific publications;
- Facilitate the adoption of the results presented in the reports into relevant research and other scientific products.
Types of Grants
- Regional Grants: Southeast Asia & Brazil
- Global Grants: Global ISF
Themes
- Southeast Asia & Brazil
- Themes
- Rainforest
- Climate & Labor
- Themes
- Global
- Themes: Climate & Labor
Topics that will be funded by the ISF 2023 project:
- The Pulitzer Center has supported reporting that works on underreported issues in tropical forests for the past 5 years, especially via two journalism funding funds: Rainforest Journalism Fund and Rainforest Investigative Network. In 2022, they also started a grant program for stories with a focus on discussing the relationship between Climate and Labor.
Funding Information and Duration
- ISF grants range from US$3,000 to US$4,000 (US dollars). They expect projects to be implemented within 4 months of approval.
Eligible Activities
- Examples of activities and desirable outcomes of ISF support may include, but are not limited to:
- Production and dissemination of visual content (short videos, documentaries, podcasts, content);
- Mini exhibition on campus;
- Journalism workshop for student press clubs;
- Indigenous or traditional community mobility/engagement: Knowledge exchange activities, student visits, biodiversity expeditions, citizen journalism;
- Communication activities to promote citizenship related to the proposed themes;
- Support for research activities: Adoption of data to improve the accuracy of ongoing research, insertion of data or knowledge in a book chapter;
- Insertion of results into teaching materials, campus debates, hackathons on social issues, student-led debates, and dialogues.
Types of Regions
- Southeast Asia
- Eligible regions: Countries in Southeast Asia
- Brazil
- Global
- Eligible regions: Countries globally (Non-Southeast Asia and Brazil)
Eligibility Criteria
- Applicants should be professors or researchers, or groups of students guided by a responsible professor. In the case of Brazil, applications from professors and researchers based at universities in the Legal Amazon region are very welcome.
- Projects carried out through consortia of professors from universities in one or more regions of the country are also very welcome.
Requirements
- Proposals need to use or be inspired by stories reported by Pulitzer Center-supported journalists for the rainforest (RIN and RJF) and Climate and Labor programs.
- The activity must present an intended impact with audiences in the academic community (students or faculty/research fellows) or civil society.
- It is desirable (but not mandatory) that projects include partnerships with civil society, local social movements, and Indigenous or traditional community movements.
For more information, visit Pulitzer Center.