Projects serve as the point of departure for a multi-faceted engagement, understanding world events with international reporting. We feature materials that educators can use in the classroom, in supplement to our reporting and our e-books.
In her film, The Edge of Joy, Pulitzer Center journalist, Dawn Shapiro explores the maternal mortality crisis occurring throughout Nigeria. The movie examines the social, cultural, religious, and human resource factors contributing to maternal deaths and the work being done to reverse the current trend. A trailer of the film is available on her Pulitzer Center reporting project page, Nigeria - The Edge of Joy (link available in lesson plan).
During the winter of 2010 and spring of 2011 Americans watched the Jasimine Revolution in Tunisia inspire similar youth uprisings across North Africa. Through this lesson, students will examine and discuss the conditions in Tunisia that led to rebellion, as well as the consequences -- both intended and unintended -- of political uprisings and change in regime.
April 5, 2011 marks the one-year commemoration of the deadly explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia. This lesson plan explores the growing coal mining industry in Colombia, relating it to the risks and rewards of the same industry in the United States, while considering the following question: Do the economic benefits presented by the sale of coal (and/or other natural resources) outweigh the environmental, health, and safety risks inherent in the mining process?
The novels described in this reading list are a fraction of the fiction and non-fiction resources related countries discussed in journalist Jina Moore's work. Moore covers issues of peace building in Africa. The resources are appropriate for a range of students and should be pre-viewed by the class teacher before use in the classroom. The book descriptions, as well as additional information about the author, can be found by clicking on each book title.
In their project, “China’s Rising Labor Movement” Pulitzer Center journalists Adam Matthews and Jocelyn Baun examine the growth of a labor movement in China’s factory workforce. As workers begin to demand wage increases, pay for overtime work, safe working conditions, and collective bargaining rights, the dynamic between the Chinese labor force, government and international companies based in urban and rural China is shifting dramatically. This lesson examines this changing relationship and encourages students to think about the lives of many Chinese factory workers, the likelihood of unionization and the reasons why some Chinese workers might not want to change the system.
Rebuilding Hope is a documentary film directed by Pulitzer Center journalist, Jen Marlowe. The film explores the experience of three Sudanese "Lost Boys" as they return to Sudan in 2007, 20 years after fleeing their homes to escape the Sudanese Civil War. Throughout the film, the young men assess their own hopes, dreams and fears as they return to their villages across Sudan, as well as those of the Southern Sudanese people nearly three years after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. They explore the connections between the conflict in South Sudan to the conflict in Darfur, probing the larger questions of identity and ethnicity in Sudan. The In-Depth Video Segments featured in this lesson plan are available, for free, online. Through this lesson, students can explore the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the conflicts in Darfur and South Sudan, the role of women and girls in Southern Sudan, and the challenges facing education and health care in South Sudan – all issues which persist today and will become more pressing as the South secedes in July 2011.
This “Fragile States” lesson plan draws on select video reports from the Fragile States Global Gateway on the Pulitzer Center website. After completing this plan your students will have: (1) Learned what factors contribute to the creation of a “fragile state” and understand the international community’s role in helping these states avoid failure or rebuild from conflict. (2) Defined “international aid,” gained an understanding of the intricacies involved in providing aid, and accurately represented the percentage of the U.S. budget dedicated to global foreign aid. (3) Gained a better understanding of specific elements of the conflicts in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the plight of child soldiers abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army, and the experience of every-day Haitians both before and after the 2010 earthquake. (4) Imagined life in a society vastly different from their own.
The resources outlined in this lesson plan can be used to help students complete a comprehensive research paper on the events of the 2011 Middle East uprisings, or “Arab Spring.” The sources may also be grouped to help students focus on specific factors that led to, sustained, and in some respects, expedited the revolutions: the role of Arab youth; the use of social media; the role of the U.S. and other NATO countries; demographic factors such as the “youth bulge;” and economic factors such as the global recession and high unemployment rates.
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