Story Grant and Training Program for Indigenous Environmental Journalists

Story Themes

• They are particularly interested in stories that:
  • Explore environmental solutions and resiliency led by Indigenous Peoples;
  • Focus on sustainable resource use, Indigenous agriculture and traditional grazing and/or land management practices as a solution to address the climate, health and biodiversity crises;
  • Investigate land rights and environmental sovereignty, including historical precedent and legal frameworks;
  • Highlight the threats faced by Indigenous environmental defenders; and
  • Expose governments, corporations and other powerful actors who fail to meet commitments to include Indigenous Peoples or intentionally sideline them as leaders in decision-making around climate and environmental issues.
• Proposals that focus on topics or stories that have not been widely covered are preferred. Issues that have already received a lot of media coverage or don’t provide unique angles to environmental challenges are less likely to be selected.

Funding Information

• They expect to award between 8-9 grants with an average budget of $1,400 each.

Benefits

• As part of the program, they’ll pair each journalist with an Indigenous journalist mentor, facilitate networking opportunities between experts and the selected journalists and offer a story grant to each.
• Selected journalists will also participate in two additional training opportunities: A synchronous, discussion-based online course on Indigenous journalism with access to the instructor and a one-day virtual workshop to deepen their storytelling skills and engage with subject-matter experts from around the world.

Eligibility Criteria

• Applicants must self-identify as Indigenous or belonging to a tribe and will be asked to provide details on their Indigenous or tribal affiliations in the application.
• Applicants can be from any country in the world.
• Journalists who have previously received Indigenous Story Grants from EJN in 2021 and/or 2022 are eligible for this opportunity, but preference will be given to those who have not yet received support.
• Journalists who are not indigenous are not eligible for this opportunity; however, they will accept applications from pairings or teams of Indigenous and non-Indigenous journalists. In these cases, the Indigenous journalist must be the lead applicant, or the application will be disqualified. Lead applicants are responsible for communicating with EJN and receiving funds on the group’s behalf, if awarded. Please note non-Indigenous journalists are welcome as collaborators in the story grant but will not be eligible to participate in the other networking or training opportunities that are part of this program.
• For the purposes of this grant opportunity, they will only be accepting applications in English. Unfortunately, they do not have the capacity to consider applications in other languages at this time. Applicants must have a sufficient understanding of English to participate in the workshop, which will be held in English, and to take the course, which is available in both English and Spanish.
• Applications are open to journalists working in any medium (online, print, television, radio) and other expert media practitioners with investigative reporting experience and a history of covering environmental issues. They encourage applications from freelance reporters and staff from all types of media organizations – international, national, local and community-based.

For more information, visit EJN.