Fellows for Lubumbashi, DRC Reporting Trip

IMG_1886The International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) selected 11 journalists from seven countries to participate as Fellows with the African Great Lakes Reporting Initiative. A group of six women journalists will report from Goma, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) while concurrently five women journalists will cover stories Lubumbashi, in southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Both trips will take place May 4-17, 2017

All Fellows will begin their trips in Nairobi, Kenya for a multi-day orientation and security training before departing for their respective reporting locations. While on the ground, fellows will have the opportunity to meet with local journalists, collaborate with international peers, and discover sites and sources relevant to their reporting. This is the IWMF’s eight trip to Goma, and the first trip to Lubumbashi, DRC.

The IWMF designed the African Great Lakes Reporting Initiative to support journalists interested in pursuing stories that go beyond the well-established narratives of political instability, armed conflicts, and humanitarian crisis in the region. The program was created in 2014, building on the success of earlier IWMF reporting fellowships to the Western Sahara and DRC. To date, 93 journalists have covered a wide range of under-reported topics including humanitarian issues, democracy, food security, and development. Their work has been produced and published by leading media outlets around the world.

During the next four years, the IWMF will continue to lead groups of women journalists to the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. By 2019, more than 250 reporters will have together reshaped traditional media narratives about this complicated and promising region. The IWMF pays for fellowship-related expenses including travel, lodging, meals, and fixers/interpreters unless a selected journalist’s news organization wishes to assume these costs.

Visit our blog for updates from #IWMFfellows on the ground.

Lubumbashi Fellows (2017)

Agnès Bun | Agence France-Presse

Twitter: @AgnesBun

Agnès Bun is the South Asia video correspondent of Agence France-Presse based in New Delhi. She reports on a wide array of stories in the region, ranging from Bangladesh’s disappearing islands to India’s Olympic female wrestlers and illegal child mining in East India. She has lived in Paris, Phnom Penh and Hong Kong and covered major news stories worldwide including the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the Eastern Ukraine conflict in 2014 and the aftermath of typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013. Before joining AFP, she worked in Paris as a business reporter for France 2, one of France’s leading broadcasters. She taught journalism at the Hong Kong Baptist University for two years and also won the Daniel Pearl Award in 2010.

LYNSEY CHUTEL | QUARTZ AFRICA

Twitter: @lynseychutel

Lynsey Chutel covers southern Africa for Quartz Africa, reporting on general news, business, technology and culture. Before joining Quartz, Chutel worked as a correspondent for the Associated Press, covering breaking news and features in southern Africa. Earlier, she was a producer at the South African 24-hour news channel eNCA, where she reported from several countries in Africa, including Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Madagascar and Rwanda.

LAURA KASINOF | Freelance Print Journalist

Twitter: @kasinof

Laura Kasinof is a freelance print journalist whose works focuses migration, religion, conflict and life after war. She is the author of Don’t Be Afraid of the Bullets: An Accidental War Correspondent in Yemen, a memoir of her time reporting for the New York Times from Yemen, which PRI’s The World named as a top book of 2014. Since leaving Sanaa in 2012, Kasinof has reported feature, investigative stories on the trade of foreign domestic workers in the Middle East, traumas faced by women in the US military, and the refugee crisis in Germany. She’s also written for Harper’s, VQR, the Guardian, the Atlantic, Washington Monthly, Newsweek, GOOD, Guernica, Foreign Policy, Christian Science Monitor and more. Her work has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the International Reporting Project and the International Center for Journalists.

SOLANGE LUSIKU | LE SOUVERAIN

Twitter: @solangelusiku

Solange Lusiku Nsimire is the editor of Le Souverain, an independent newspaper published in Bukavu, DRC. She is also the winner of the IWMF’s 2014 Courage in Journalism Award. Lusiku Nsimire took over as editor in chief of the paper in 2007, after the death of founder Nunu Salufa. Le Souverain was created in 1992 and since then it has been published monthly, with content devoted to the promotion of democracy and advancement of women’s rights.

LENA MUCHA | FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER

Twitter: @Lena_Mucha

Lena Mucha is a freelance photographer based in Berlin who has lived for several years in Latin America and Spain, working on research projects about gender violence and civil resistance for NGOs such as Doctors without Borders. She has been awarded with different international prices as the Photo Annual Awards 2015, the Reporters in the Field Scholarship as well as a scholarship for Magnum photographer Patrick Zachmanns workshop and David Alan Harveys workshop in New York in 2016. With her work about young female cadets in Armenia and Karabakh she has been nominated for the Unicef Photo of the Year Award 2016. Mucha’s work has been exhibited and published internationally (Spiegel, Washington Post, GEO, Stern, BURN Magazine, VICE Colombia, Leica Magazine, Huffington Post, El Pais, Nido Stern, 6mois, Lensculture).