The Amazônia Vox platform is among fifteen projects selected in Brazil for the 2023 edition of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma’s early childhood reporting fellowship. The program is a resource center and global network of journalists, journalism educators, and health professionals dedicated to improving media coverage of trauma, conflict, and tragedy. It is a project of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, with international offices in London and Melbourne.
The program will run from May to November 2023 and will be led by journalist Fábio Takahashi in collaboration with Mariana Kotscho, Daniela Tófoli and Paula Perim. The selected scholarship recipients will receive financial support, as well as guidance and participation in webinars with national and international journalists in various areas of activity, focusing on children.
The selection criteria for the scholarship were based on projects that addressed early childhood in Brazil. The program seeks to explore issues related to access to health care, sanitation, pesticide use, violence and child abandonment.
The project - With the proposal to produce a series of articles on the numbers and reports of the challenges of prenatal coverage for mothers in Amazon communities, Amâzonia Vox, through its creator Daniel Nardin, was selected for the grant. The project will focus on riverside communities, presenting the rates and consequences of when prenatal care is not provided. Through solutions journalism, the series will detail the initiatives and responses to the issue, seeking to inspire similar initiatives on a large scale.
In addition to Amazônia Vox, the program included among its scholarship recipients journalists from outlets such as CNN Brasil, G1, Folha de São Paulo, UOL, Revista Piauí, BBC Brasil, Rede Globo and Valor Econômico.
The selection for the Dart Center program is the third in just a few months of development of the platform, which went live in May, in the testing phase. Amazônia Vox was also selected for the Jogo Limpo 2.0 program, from the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and YouTube Brazil, and the Sustainability Lab, from Google Brazil.
The Dart Center scholarship is part of the Early Childhood Journalism Initiative, a multi-year training program of the center to improve coverage of early childhood development worldwide. The fellowship was made possible by grants from Bernard van Leer Foundation (Netherlands), Foundation Maria Cecilia Souto Vidigal (Brazil) and The Fund Two Lilies (United States).
Image credit: Tarso Sarraf