Submissions open for Impact Seed Fund (ISF) Global 2024

Pulitzer Center aims to support projects that inspire changes in perspectives, narratives, and actions among communities as its ultimate impact. In this way, the main goal of the grant is to create more informed and empathetic communities about the underreported issues of the rainforest and climate change. The ISF is designed to be flexible and responsive to the needs of educators and communities, allowing applicants to establish activities related to pressing issues of the rainforest, the ocean and the climate crisis.

Aims of ISF

• Pulitzer Center believe in the power of knowledge and the role of education and educators in addressing multidisciplinary problems. Therefore, the ISF is designed to provide seed funding to educators in order to raise awareness of pressing tropical forests, ocean, transparency and governance issues among communities. The ISF provides micro-scale support to:
  • Initiate new collaborations or build on existing collaborations between professors, researchers, students, and journalists;
  • Increase engagement between educational communities, journalists, and Indigenous and traditional populations;
  • Encourage the use of creative images (e.g., photographs, short videos, documentaries, podcasts), data images, and information from the reports in teaching materials, student activities, curricular and classroom materials, or scientific publications;
  • Facilitate the adoption of the results presented in the reports into relevant research and other scientific products.

The stories as inspiration for the projects

• The stories resulting from the Rainforest Journalism Fund, Rainforest Investigations Network, Transparency and Governance, and Ocean Reporting Network programs bring determinant local and global perspectives, often from voices that are little heard. In addition, the reports focus on underreported stories and situations that are key to thinking about current challenges around tropical forests, ocean, and transparency issues. These reports produce many high quality visual, writing, and data resources, capable of conveying complex issues in a powerful and easy-to-understand way, configuring an excellent educational and communication tool. As such, they can generate important inputs for ISF-funded projects, and proposals need to be inspired by and utilize the stories reported by Pulitzer Center-supported journalists.

Topics

• The Pulitzer Center has supported reporting that works on underreported issues in tropical forests for the past years, especially via two journalism funding funds: Rainforest Journalism Fund and Rainforest Investigative Network. In 2023, they also started a grant program for stories with a focus on discussing ocean-related topics. Based on these stories, the ISF proposes to fund activities related to education and engagement of the university community specifically on these two topics: tropical forests and ocean.

Funding Information

• ISF grants range from US$2,000 to US$4,000 (US dollars). They expect projects to be implemented and concluded within five months of approval.

Project Duration

• The maximum duration for the implementation of the proposal is five months. Upon approval of the project proposal and the signing of agreement with Pulitzer Center, funds will be transferred to the selected lead applicant. Formal start and end dates for the project will be established in the agreement. Applicants must submit financial and narrative reports at the end of the period and support, detailing costs incurred and outcomes achieved.

Outcomes

• The activity must present an intended impact with audiences in the academic community (students or faculty/research fellows) or civil society that align with one or both of the following outcomes:
  • 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 and 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.
  • It is desirable (but not mandatory) that projects include partnerships with civil society, local social movements, and Indigenous or traditional community movements.

Type of activities they will fund

• Examples of activities and desirable outcomes of ISF support may include, but are not limited to:
  • Educational material development: Incorporating Pulitzer Center journalism into teaching materials and syllabus, field trip program, active citizenship training.
  • Engagement with students, academia and public: Student writing competition, debate, public dialogue, exhibition on campus, hackathons.
  • Research support and dissemination of findings: This may include updating ongoing research and incorporating new insights in a book chapter, organizing a seminar.
  • Content production and dissemination including short videos, documentaries, podcasts.

Eligibility Criteria

• Applicants should be professors or researchers in a higher education institution, or groups of students guided by a responsible professor, and not have the project applied in Africa, Brazil, or Southeast Asia, as these areas have their own ISF grant. Projects carried out through consortia of professors are also very welcome.

For more information, visit Pulitzer Center.