"Afghan stargazer, see his story at http://atfp.co/16fr0NE." Image, caption and story by Pulitzer Center grantee Jeffrey E. Stern, via Instagram. Afghanistan, 2013. Read more of Jeff’s dispatches from Afghanistan here.
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Voices of Haiti isa book that explores post-earthquake Haiti using their stories, Kwame Dawes’ poetry, Andre Lamberston’s photos, and Lisa Armstrong’s reporting. Awarded the Kikus Star. For iPad | For Amazon
In Search of Home is an award-winning book book that dives into the stories of statless people in Kenya, Burma and the Dominican Republic. For iPad | For Amazon
Could alleviating poverty be as simple as giving cash to people that need it? Pulitzer Center student fellow Kerstin Egenhofer, from Boston University School of Public Health, looks at cash transfer programs in Malawi.
Photo: George Jeremiah, 35, stands proudly in front of his house. He and his wife Jenet are both blind and were struggling to take care of their family before they enrolled in the cash transfer program. Image by Kerstin Egenhofer. Malawi, 2013.
Panama Dams
“Here is the story of my friend, who they killed,” said M10 coordinator and father of Justo Jimenez, Luis Jimenez, as he pulled out a tattered cover page of a February 2012 newspaper from his hand-woven satchel. The paper shows the image of the beaten Ngäbe-Buglé Jerónimo Rodríguez Tugrí, one of the two protesters confirmed to have died from the police crackdown at the 2012 protest. “He gave his blood to those of us who were there.”
Fighting for their way of life and their land, protesters in Panama clash with police. Pulitzer Center student fellow from University of Miami Nicholas Swyter profiles the problem for Dowser. Read the article here.
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VOICES OF HAITI Lisa Armstrong, Kwame Dawes and Andre Lambertson
An itinerant preacher whose story reads like Job—except for an incandescent smile and a mountain-moving faith. A woman who remains resolutely joyful despite the HIV that has infected half her family. Young girls subjected to rape and forced into commercial sex. A couple whose triumph over the disease is a study in grace. “Voices of Haiti” tells these and other stories in a mesmerizing presentation that combines the poetry of Kwame Dawes, the prose of Lisa Armstrong, the photography of Andre Lambertson, and the music of Kevin Simmonds, from work that has been featured in The New York Times, PBS NewsHour, and USA Today. To purchase an enhanced version of the e-book exclusively for iPad, please visit http://bit.ly/voices-haiti.
"Voices of Haiti" is now also available on Amazon. Click here to purchase. "Voices of Haiti" was recognized as one of the best e-books of the year by Pictures of the Year International Awards (POYi). The book was also awarded a Kirkus Star.
IN SEARCH OF HOME Greg Constantine, Stephanie Hanes
They are not refugees. Often they are living in their homes in a country they consider to be their own. Yet they are stateless—without the basic right to get an education, work in the legal economy, receive health benefits, get married, vote or own property. The cause is often rooted in religion or ethnicity but even when the stateless are not actively persecuted they remain the most vulnerable. Writer Stephanie Hanes and photographer Greg Constantine draw on field work from the past six years to present a nuanced look at the stateless peoples of Kenya, Burma, and the Dominican Republic. To purchase an enhanced version of this e-book made exclusively for iPad, please visit the iBookstore.
"In Search of Home" is now also available on Amazon. Click here to purchase. *"In Search of Home" received an Honorable Mention from the National Press Photographers Association in the Tablet/Mobile Delivery category (2013).
Global warming is happening faster around the Arctic Ocean than anywhere else. To adjust to this new climate, local communities must change the way they live and work – for better and for worse. Pulitzer Center grantee Yves Eudes profiles six small communities in Norway, Iceland, Russia, Greenland, Canada and Alaska. Check out the first two stories here.
Allison Shelley and Allyn Gaestel, the team behind the Pulitzer Center project “Chaupadi: Nepali Women’s Monthly Exile," discuss the challenges and lessons learned in Nepal’s far west. Watch their incredibly beautiful video above where they introduce their project and the remote and isolated region of Accham. Read and see more of their reporting here.
The End of Polio
“WILL the world eradicate polio? If it does, some of the credit may go to a 73-year-old billionaire horse-breeder from the Indian city of Pune.” Pulitzer Center grantee Esha Chhabra makes that provocative claim in an essay for The Economist.
Oral polio vaccine, developed in the 1950s, has brought India close to the finish line, she writes, with no new polio cases in more than two years. Cyrus Poonawalla, a pharmaceutical magnate, wants to get India across the finish line of total eradication, by substituting a safer but more expensive injectable polio vaccine (IPV) for the low-cost oral version that is commonly used today.
Esha reports that Poonawalla is willing to subsidize the more expensive version as a “philanthropic gesture.” His hope is that economies of scale will eventually help reduce the cost.
“Offering IPV at a deeply discounted price is likely to rattle big pharma companies,” she writes. “But for Mr Poonawalla this is what it takes to get the vaccine’s price down.”
— Tom Hundley for the Pulitzer Center’s weekly newsletter. Get your copy here.
THE END OF OCEANS
Global warming, pollution and overfishing are killing the world’s oceans. Pulitzer Center grantee Erik Vance, in a deeply reported piece for Harper’s, takes us to Mexico’s Sea of Cortez, a place that Jacques Cousteau once described as “the Aquarium of the World.”
“It hosts an astounding 950 fish species, 10 percent of which are found nowhere else in the world,” Erik writes. “Fishermen working the sea’s 26,000 boats are both rich and poor, newcomers and inheritors of thousands of years of tradition. The sea is perfectly situated to supply the hungriest markets—the United States, Japan, and now China—and over the past few decades it has seen one of the world’s largest drops in biomass. Eighty-five percent of its species either are being fished at their maximum or are over-exploited. Consequently, there is no better place on earth to look at the future of global fishing and the crisis facing the oceans.”
It’s hardly a secret that the Sea of Cortez—and the world’s oceans—“are headed for disaster,” says Erik in an interview on The Leonard Lopate Show, but there are solutions if people start paying attention. Pulitzer Center grantee Dominic Bracco II collaborated with Erik on the reporting and provides a remarkable gallery of photographs. Erik and Dominic also collaborated on a video documentary published by Harper’s.
— Tom Hundley for the Pulitzer Center’s weekly newsletter. Get your copy here.
Up on the Roof
Jeff Stern, who has lived and worked in Afghanistan on and off since 2007, says that the first thing he does upon returning to Kabul is head for the rooftops. From there he takes the measure of the city and its changes. On his current trip, as a Pulitzer Center grantee, Jeff surveys the Afghan capital’s changing landscape—and the implications for its inhabitants as the U.S. prepares to withdraw its troops by the end of the year.
Most analysts are deeply pessimistic about Afghanistan’s chances, but Jeff, writing for The Atlantic, takes a different view:
“[T]he feeling I have is that the Taliban is facing a simple numbers problem. There are just too many people who’ve built houses here, too many people opening restaurants, too many people playing soccer, too many people learning new languages, too many people, for the Taliban to do more than insert slivers of violence info city life, to serve as a disruptive criminal syndicate settling scores, capable of terrific violence and trauma, but not of ever really coming back.”
— Tom Hundley for the Pulitzer Center’s weekly newsletter. Get your copy here.