Great news! We not only reached our crowdfunding goal of raising $12,000 — we’ve now surpassed it. We’re already using those funds to bring three great young journalists to the Global Investigative Journalism Conference — from Myanmar, Nigeria, and Peru.
Big thanks to everyone who helped. To date we’ve received an extraordinary 105 contributions from 22 countries. (You can check out the full list of contributors here.)
A special shout-out goes to Netzwerk Recherche, Germany’s association of investigative journalists, which made two large contributions, including a $1,000 donation that put us over the top. Founded in 2001, Netzwerk Recherche is one of the world’s largest associations of investigative journalists. NR also put it out over its listserv, which also brought a number of individual donations from our German colleagues.
But we still have 4 days left in our campaign. The more funds we raise, the more fellowships we can offer. Even a $10 contribution will push the campaign forward.
Here’s the latest on where that money is going. We’d like you to meet our second and third Indiegogo fellows:
Aung Ye Maung Maung is the Executive Editor of Myanmar Freedom Daily in Yangon, Myanmar. He has worked as a journalist since 2004.
“Myanmar is in transition and the print media here is changing too,” he says. “The government lifted censorship on print media just last year, after nearly 50 years.”
“The pre-press censor had put a lot of restrictions on us. Now that the print media here is much more open, we are trying to come up with investigative reports. It’s a new thing and a new challenge for us and we know we need to learn a lot.”
Aung believes that the Global Investigative Journalism Conference will be a great opportunity “to learn from the veteran investigative reporters and a good chance for me to network with international investigative reporters.”
Milagros Salazar is a reporter with IDL-Reporteros in Peru, the country’s premier investigative journalism team, and a correspondent for Inter Press Service. In 2011, Salazar published a multi-part investigation that exposed fraud in Peru’s fishing industry, the world’s second largest after China.
“The Global Investigative Journalism Conference will be a fantastic opportunity to improve our knowledge of research techniques and share experiences among journalists of the world,” says Milagros. “It’s not always possible that reporters of all continents can meet to talk about how to face corruption, help protect human rights, and talk about climate change and many global issues.”
