Managing Director, NHW
Nigeria Health Watch has opened calls for applications for the First Cohort of Solutions Journalism Fellowship Nigeria. Fellows will be trained to understand how to produce solutions stories and supported to produce theirs over the six months period of the fellowship.
Nigeria, like the rest of the world, is dealing with a lot of problems for which there are efforts to respond to. Solutions Journalism aims to tell these stories of how people are responding to different social problems with the aim to empower others experiencing similar problems with information on how they are being addressed.
Rather than the often problem-focused journalism, Solutions Journalism adopts a solutions-oriented approach to storytelling; telling rigorous, investigative, and compelling stories of responses to existing social problems. It is the belief of Nigeria Health Watch that the insights from these stories can help scale up the responses or replicate them in other places.
Solutions Journalism highlights what works, as opposed to what does not, and goes further to investigate why an intervention or solution to a social problem was able to bring change. It also looks at what could have been done differently to improve or solve similar problems in other places and can be used as an effective tool to hold the powerful accountable by showing them how others are solving problems, thereby removing excuses.
As part of its Solutions Journalism Africa Initiative project supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, Nigeria Health Watch works with Newsrooms and individuals to spread the practice of solutions journalism in Nigeria. It trains them to understand why solutions journalism matters and support them to produce these stories.
Nigeria Health Watch says is currently working with 10 newsrooms across Nigeria and will be onboarding 10 fellows as part of the initiative.
Fellows will be given grant to work on their Solutions Journalism project of choice, which must be focused on health + any other area in the SDGs; remote support from a mentor to produce their proposed stories; editorial freedom to work on their project using their preferred format (video, photography, audio, text, illustration, animation etc); and access to exclusive workshops + webinars to hone their solutions journalism and storytelling skills.
They will also be given access to a global network of solutions journalists and storytellers; opportunity to publish stories in media outlets outside Nigeria; and priority in accepting and commissioning their pitches for publication on Nigeria Health Watch website after their fellowship is over.
A prospective applicant must be:
- Someone affiliated with a media organisation or a freelancer.
- Someone passionate about telling stories of efforts to respond to various social problems especially around health.
- Someone who can tell compelling stories using multiple formats (In addition to writers, the organisers want photojournalists, documentary photographers, podcasters, documentary video makers, graphic animators).
- Someone who is already familiar with the solutions journalism framework or interested to learn about it
- Someone willing and available to commit to the fellowship schedule (training, mentoring and periodic check-ins).
To apply, entrants need to first Register Here to attend an information session where they will be introduced solutions journalism. Thereafter, they can Apply Here before the deadline, August 31, 2021 at 5pm.
For further information about the fellowship, please go to https://nigeriahealthwatch.com/call-for-first-cohort-of-solutions-journalism-fellowship-nigeria/.
