Pulitzer Center Impact Seed Fund

The 2025 Southeast Asia ISF focuses on a range of topics, including rainforests and climate change, with a particular emphasis on its interconnectedness with workers and vulnerable communities. They aim to support projects that inspire changes in perspectives, narratives, and actions, fostering a more informed and empathetic community. By utilizing Pulitzer Center-supported stories, the ISF initiative aims to:

• Improve the awareness and critical thinking of students and educators about complex issues related to tropical forests, oceans, climate crisis, including their impacts on vulnerable communities. It encourages members of the university community to explore innovative solutions to address these impacts.
• Equip students and educators to take action and drive change to protect the environment, as well as the rights of those most affected by environmental destruction.

Objectives

• Initiate new collaborations or build on existing collaborations among professors, researchers, students, local universities, most affected local communities, and journalists
• Increase engagement between educational communities, journalists, and Indigenous and affected communities
• Encourage the use of creative materials (e.g., photographs, short videos, documentaries, podcasts), infographics, data visuals, and information from the reports in teaching materials, student activities, curricular and classroom materials, or scientific publications;
• Support the meaningful translation of key findings, datasets, and methodologies from journalism reporting into projects tailored to unique local contexts. This may include comparative studies across different geographical regions
• Facilitate the adoption of the results presented in the reports into relevant research and other scientific products.

Funding Information

• ISF Southeast Asia grants range from USD $3,000 to $4,000.
• They expect projects to be implemented within four – five months of approval.

Eligible Costs

• Collaborative projects with Pulitzer Center-supported journalists or multi-disciplinary educators;
• Collaborative projects with the most- affected local communities, such as: field surveys, knowledge exchange activities, student immersive learnings, biodiversity expeditions, and citizen journalism;
• Insertion of PC- supported journalism elements results into teaching materials, new modules, campus debates, hackathons on social issues, student-led debates, and dialogues;
• Support for multi-stakeholders dialogue, Focus Group Discussions with decision makers webinar series, seminars;
• Production and dissemination of visual content to support learning aids (short videos, documentaries, podcasts);
• Small exhibitions on campus, such as photo exhibits or film screenings;
• Journalism workshops for student press clubs;
• Communication activities to promote citizenship related to the proposed themes;
• Support for research activities: rapid studies, white papers, policy recommendations

Expected Outcomes

• Improve the awareness and critical thinking of students and educators about complex issues related to tropical forests, the ocean, and the climate crisis, including their impacts on vulnerable communities, and encourage the exploration of solutions and innovations to address these impacts.
• Equip students and educators to take action and drive changes to foster protection of the social and environment discourse as well as the rights of those most affected by socio-environmental destruction.
• Projects will ideally collaborate with the most affected communities; for example, co-conceiving ideas with Indigenous communities, community leaders, or local organizations working directly with disadvantaged communities; collaboration with smaller universities in local areas.
• The project must demonstrate a strong Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion approach.

Eligibility Criteria

• Applicants should be university professors or researchers based in an institution
• Applicants are welcome to propose a project through a consortia of educators from universities in one or more regions of the country.

For more information, visit Pulitzer Center.