CALL FOR PROPOSALS – ROAD SAFETY FELLOWSHIP THIRD PHASE
(Download the application form in MS Word here.)
Road crashes are preventable, yet scores of people die and are injured on the country’s roads every day.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says about 7,000 Filipinos die each year and thousands more are injured or disabled due to road traffic crashes. Why is this so?
There are adequate laws designed to address the factors that contribute to road collisions, but poor enforcement and low public awareness of road safety rules, coupled with road users’ indifference towards safety regulations continue to pose problems.
There is need for a sustained information, education and communications program to raise awareness of road safety not only as a traffic concern, but more importantly as a public health and development issue.
The media is in a position to inform the public of the risk factors that contribute to road crashes, about laws that are designed to address these causes and promote policy, good practices and behavioral changes that will reduce and prevent road crashes through data-based and visual story-telling.
The Road Safety Journalism Fellowship is a vehicle for writers from print, broadcast and online media to contribute to road safety through the production of in-depth stories in multi-media platforms.
The World Health Organization, in collaboration with the Department of Transportation (DOTr) and in partnership with VERA Files, is launching today, May 1, at the start of Road Safety Month, the third phase of the Road Safety Journalism Fellowship.
The Fellowship aims to strengthen the capacity of journalists to produce comprehensive news and feature articles and translate statistics on road injuries and deaths to human and public interest stories.
The Program aims to generate interest in road safety reportage that is thorough, exhaustive and contextualized; one that goes beyond breaking news, body counts and police reports but which instead frames road safety as a public health and development issue.
The Fellowship is part of the multi-country Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety 2015-2019 carried out by a consortium of international partners, together with national governments and local organizations.
Twenty-one media fellows from around metropolitan Manila and other parts of the country had taken part in the two programs (2015-2017). They produced close to 80 stories on road safety published in different news outlets and also disseminated online by VERA Files in a special Chit Estella Road Safety page (verafiles.org/specials/road-safety).
Mechanics
We are calling for story proposals that will push road safety as an agenda and a shared responsibility of everyone in the community – policy-makers and law enforcers, road builders, vehicle manufacturers, motorists, the riding public, pedestrians and the public in general.
Fellows will produce a minimum of five well-researched stories/video productions that will be published in their own news organizations.
Story ideas can be developed from the following subjects, relating to major behavioral risk factors that influence the likelihood of a crash and the severity of its consequences: (1) speed; (2) use of seatbelts: (3) child restraint; (4) helmets for motorcycle riders; and (5) drunk and distracted driving.
Stories can provide an in-depth analysis of data, behaviors, and impact of these risk factors and the presence (or absence) of policy and legislative-related actions and their impact and status and nature of implementation and enforcement. Other topics of emerging importance may also be tackled.
The Fellowship will open with an Orientation/Training Seminar in July. The Fellows will participate in a Roundtable on Road Safety involving editors and other journalists in September. And a large Media and Road Safety in November.
Who can apply?
The 2018 Program is open to journalists from print, online and broadcast media, freelance writers and bloggers based in Metro Manila and Luzon.
Journalists with at least three years of reporting experience are invited to submit three story proposals (each story idea explained in 150-200 words) they wish to work on for the duration of the Fellowship.
The professional qualifications of the applicants will be taken into consideration in the selection, but the quality and substance of the story proposals will be given greater weight.
How to apply
Applicants are to send in their:
a. updated CVs (no more than two pages)
b. two samples of published articles/video clips
c. a letter of endorsement from an editor or producer
d. and a completed application form (Download the form in MS Word here.)
to Lucille Sodipe at lsodipe@verafiles.org or editorial@verafiles.org.