Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship Program 2022-2023 |US$5,000|America|

The prestigious Carter Center in Atlanta and the University of La Sabana open the call for applications for the Rosalynn Carter Scholarship for Journalism in Mental Health 2022-2023. The project awards two scholarships for Latin American journalists who investigate and produce reports that reveal the state of mental health in this region.

The program is open to bilingual journalists (English and Spanish) who work for media outlets in Latin America, in any format or platform, and who have at least three years of professional experience. The two journalists selected as fellows will receive US$5,000 each.

The scholarship is administered by an interdisciplinary team made up of the Faculties of Communication and Medicine of the University of La Sabana, in Bogotá, Colombia.

Benefits

• The two journalist-interns (or teams) selected will receive US$5,000 each to investigate a topic related to mental health or mental illness in Latin America for one year. Scholarship recipients will not have to leave their jobs or their responsibilities with the means to be eligible for the scholarship.
• Scholars will have access to online training on journalism and mental health with the Carter Center in Atlanta (United States), at the beginning and at the end of the year of their scholarship, and support from specialists in mental health and journalism from the University of Savannah.
• The beneficiaries will also have the accompaniment and advice of mental health experts during the production of their stories. Fellows will have one year (September 2022 to September 2023) to produce and present the result of their work online at the conference organized in Atlanta, at the end of the fellowship.
• Fellows must produce pieces of investigative journalism in any format that can be broadcast or published in their media and that have a strong impact on the public agenda.

Eligibility for the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship Program 2022-2023

• Journalists with at least three years of professional experience who reside in Latin America (except Puerto Rico) and work for the media in any format or platform.
• Applicant journalists must understand and speak English and demonstrate those skills. If they are selected, they must first explain their projects and then their results in English before the members of the Scholarship Advisory Committee and other international scholarship recipients, during their virtual meetings with the Carter Center and the University of La Sabana.
• The applicant must have the support of their communication medium through a letter signed by the editor or director of the medium, in which the commitment of the medium to support the application and publish the result of the investigation is clear.
• Scholarship recipients are NOT required to resign their employment because they are scholarship recipients.
• Participants must choose and explain in an essay of no more than a thousand words a journalistic project related to mental health or mental illness in one or several countries or regions of Latin America.
• As an exceptional case, applicants may apply in pairs to one of the $5,000 scholarships. This award will be split 50-50%. The pair of winners will be able to train and explain their project at the online event at the Carter Center in Atlanta (United States). Both participants must understand English.

Requirements to apply

To apply, applicants must send the following documents until July 10, 2022 at 12 midnight (Colombian time) to the following email [email protected] :

• Resume: Must include: academic and work history, list of the most representative publications, awards or recognitions, if any, and the year in which they were awarded. In case of presenting in pairs, please the main applicant must attach the 2 resumes in a single Word or PDF document during the application.
• Objectives of the scholarship and description of the project: an essay that does not exceed 1,000 words in Times New Roman 12 format in which the applicant describes the professional reasons for applying for the scholarship, the journalistic project in mental health that he/she would develop, the expected products and how the scholarship would benefit your career and your work. You must specify in what format she will publish the works derived from this research (newspaper, magazine, radio, television or Internet).
• Professional Work Samples: Applicants must submit three of their best journalistic works. Those jobs may or may not be related to health issues. At least one of these examples must be in the format of the proposed medium (newspaper, magazine, radio, television or Internet).
• Letter of support: Letter of support from the media outlet that supports the journalist’s application. In that letter, the media outlet must support the application and commit to publishing/broadcasting the stories that are produced as a result of the scholarship.
• Applicants will apply by sending all the documents as an attachment to the email [email protected] electronically in PDF format until July 10, 2021 at midnight (12 pm, Colombia time). Only electronic applications will be accepted.
• Three evaluators will use a standard rubric to evaluate the projects and the trajectory of the applicants. The results will be announced on August 10, 2022.
• The scholarship will last for one year from September 2022 to September 2023, the latter date when the beneficiaries will have to present the results of their research and publications.

About the scholarship

The Rosalynn Carter Fellowship, created in 1996, has benefited and trained numerous journalists in the United States, Romania, South Africa, New Zealand, and Colombia. The goal of the fellowship is to improve the quality of mental health reporting in regions where it is most needed, and then to make it easier for partner countries to take over the fellowship’s activities. This scholarship is part of an international effort by the Carter Center Mental Health Program to reduce stigma and discrimination against people with mental illness. The Colombian administration, which has awarded scholarships for journalists from the country in previous years, opens the call this year for other Latin American countries in order to extend the benefits of this program to the entire region.

Alumni of the program have produced more than 1,400 mental health-related stories, documentaries, books and other works, during and after the year as fellows. His journalistic projects have won Emmy Awards, nominations for the Pulitzer Prize, the Edward R. Murrow Award, the CPB, and awards from Metal Health America, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association, Amnesty International and the Association of Health Care Journalists.

Program objectives

The three essential goals of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism are:

• Increase rigorous and truthful reporting on mental health problems and reduce incorrect and stigmatized information on these issues.
• Help journalists to publish works of good quality that reflect a true understanding of mental health problems, through the exposure of specialized sources and resources in this field of scientific information.
• Encourage the emergence of a group of journalists who can report rigorous and accurate information through newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the Internet, and ensure that this information influences other journalists to act with the same rigor.

More information

For more information about the Latin America program of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism, please call the Fellowship administrator in Colombia, Dr. Víctor García-Perdomo, at +57 1 8 61-5555 ext: 26705 or write to the email [email protected]

VISIT SOURCE