Iwmf African Great Lakes Reporting Initiative
IMPACT RE PORT IWMF AFRICAN GREAT LAKES REPORTING INITIATIVE Five years ago, the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) received an opportunity that shifted the course of the organization. With a deep commitment to gender equality and the power of the media, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation awarded the IWMF a transformative $5 million grant to change the narrative in Africa’s Great Lakes region. The IWMF began work across the continent decades ago, but never at this scale. We are still humbled by this show of faith in our team, our efforts and our mission. What began in 2012 as a pilot project to bring journalists to Western Sahara grew into a five-year, six-country initiative taking us to Eastern Congo in 2014 and then to Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, North Kivu and other regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the following years of the program. This initiative took place against an incredible backdrop of world events that our program’s fellows lived through and reported on every day. Despite wars, insurgencies, rigged elections, expired mandates, famines, a refugee crisis, pandemics and economic collapses, the 2 IMPACT REPORT IWMF AFRICAN GREAT LAKES REPORTING INITIATIVE IWMF continued its work, empowering touching the lives of 130 local and 178 fellows’ reporting, that number is closer journalists with the skills and network to international journalists whose reporting to 36 percent. The GMMP also notes do better, more nuanced reporting on landed on the front page of The New that just 37 percent of articles in general a complex and beautiful region.
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