Talks at the Pulitzer Center

With their project, "Honduras: Aqui Vivimos" ("Honduras: We Live Here"), Bracco and Relph explore the social conditions—abject poverty, corruption, political disillusionment, and gang culture—that have made Honduras a violent country. Schwartz takes a close look at how Honduras is emerging as a new front line in the battle against drug cartels and explores the larger dynamics of an indigenous population caught in the middle. His reporting takes him to La Moskitia, one of the world's least-governed regions and the focus for both the South American drug traffickers and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.) Schwartz's article was published in the January 6 print issue of The New Yorker, and Bracco and Relph's work was featured on the magazine's website.

Pulitzer Center photojournalist Robin Hammond discusses his long-term project "Condemned," looking at mental health in Sub-saharan Africa.

Pakistan is home to more out-of-school children than almost any country in the world. Formal education is a luxury for these more than five million out-of-school children, two-thirds of whom are girls. Beenish will discuss her experiences in the country and her findings of what has been keeping scores of Pakistani children from getting an education. Esha's reporting took her to the only polio ward in India as she examined the country's eradication of disease—there have been no new cases of polio in India for the past two years. She finds that while polio may be gone, public health challenges in India continue. And the mobile phone is no longer just a toy—it is now a tool for health.

On April 25th, 2013, for World Malaria Day, the Pulitzer Center hosted a Google Hangout on fake drugs around the world. Pulitzer Center grantee Kathleen McLaughlin spoke about her reporting project on fake drugs in east Africa, and her work tracking the origins of the drugs back to China and India. Cobus Van Staden of The China in Africa Podcast and Dr. Patrick Lukulay, program director for the Promoting the Quality of Medicines initiative at the US Pharmacopeial Convention, also spoke about their experiences. Don't miss this fascinating conversation. Learn more about fake drugs in east Africa here http://bit.ly/fakedrugs1

Since 1986, more 2,800 labor leaders and union members have been killed in Colombia. After a five-year delay, the United States signed a free trade agreement with Colombia in 2011. U.S. officials said Colombia had taken steps to protect workers and labor rights. Many human rights activists and others disagreed, saying that abuse and dangers persist and in some cases increased. The percentage of unionized workers in Colombia has dropped from 15 percent 20 years ago to about 4 percent now. Not just union workers are affected; teachers, seen as social activists and community organizers, are also in danger. Moreover, Colombia has about 5 million displaced persons which creates the threat of kidnapping and unsolved disappearances across the country.

Not so many wars ago, journalists enjoyed survival rates envied by troops in trenches. Now, conflicts are too wild and fluid for trenches. Painting “PRESS” on a vehicle is likely to draw fire. Home page demand for updates is exposing more journalists—especially photographers--to more risk. And staff cutbacks are providing lots of work for freelancers eager to face great danger for little pay. Frank Greve, who has spent nearly 3 decades as an editor and an investigative reporter, explores why half the journalists ever killed on the job have died since 1992. He asks the questions: Are news organizations doing enough to protect their journalists? Are new and better models of war reporting emerging? Have technological advances helped journalists working in war zones? Greve’s extensive and detailed research on the subject goes all the way back to birth of war photography during the Civil War.

The conflict that erupted in Sudan's Darfur region a decade ago was at first largely ignored. Then it was the subject of intense media coverage and an unprecedented campaign of grassroots citizen activism. Then it was ignored again. The only constant? The suffering of the people of Darfur. Former BBC Sudan Correspondant James Copnall, journalist and human rights lawyer Rebecca Hamilton, Sudanese American freelance journalist Isma’il Kushkush, and former Nairobi bureau chief of The Washington Post Emily Wax discuss the developments in Sudan's Darfur at the Pulitzer Center in Washington, DC on March 20, 2013. This panel of distinguished journalists discussed a decade of media development in the region, how citizen activists and governments in Khartoum and Washington influenced reporting, and lessons to be learned.

Journalist Anna Nemtsova discusses the disillusionment of young Russians who, after years of fading industry, corruption, and a lack of clear ideology, are "deserting the territories" in mass exodus. After 20 years of fading industry, blooming corruption, and no clear ideology, Russia is now on the move. At least two million young and talented people from Siberia have packed up and left their homes for the prosperous European part of the country in search of better lives. Others are inventing their own religious or ideological niches to survive free from Moscow’s brutal rules, moving to communes in Siberia and elsewhere in the north. Meanwhile, young Muslims, unhappy about religious discrimination and afraid of arrests and abductions, are fleeing into the woods to join Islamist insurgents in the North Caucasus. Every fourth Russian has decided to leave the country for good. This project will research new trends in the far eastern part of Siberia and beyond that demography experts have described as “deserting of the territories”—and which the Pulitzer Center's 2012 Persephone Miel fellow Anna Nemtsova prefers to call "the Russian exodus." To illustrate the internal and external migration processes, she is traveling to the North Caucasus republics, the Jewish Autonomous Republic and the Primorye Krai regions. There she will document the human side of the forces that are pushing people away from their homes. She will explore how Russians, on the edges of the empire, are inventing life without Moscow.

Journalist Dimiter Kenarov discusses the political, economic, and environmental dimensions of shale gas extraction (commonly known as "fracking") in Poland, Pennsylvania, and beyond. Shale gas has become something to everyone. In the last few years, no other energy topic has managed to garner so much global attention and generate so much controversy. Politicians, business people, economists, scientists, environmentalists, journalists, and citizens have all joined in the fray, each one with their own view on the subject. Some have called shale gas “a game changer” and a path to energy independence and economic revival. Others have looked closely at the environmental dangers of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking (the technique of extraction) and our continued dependence on fossil fuels. Like gas taking the shape of its container – whatever it is – shale gas has no single meaning and impact. In the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania, for example, it has become a major industry, providing thousands of jobs and reviving the local economy. Nearly 9,000 wells have been drilled so far and tens of thousands are on the way. At the same time, gas migration, water contamination, and land spills have become quite common, as the industry has expanded rapidly and without much oversight, putting natural habitats and communities at risk. Traditional industries like farming and dairy production have also suffered. Other countries have recently decided to emulate the example of the United States, but for their own specific set of reasons. In Europe, Poland has now become the most zealous supporter of extraction, in the hopes of breaking its dependency on Russian energy supplies. Although still in the early stages of exploration and still far from successful, the program has turned into a major ideological tool and a centerpiece of Polish economic and national security policy. This project, a joint initiative of the Pulitzer Center and Calkins Media, will look at some of the different dimensions – political, economic, and environmental – of shale gas in Poland, Pennsylvania, and beyond.

Since 2006 Constantine has worked on a project called "Nowhere People," which examines the plight of minority groups who are not citizens of any country. Exhibitions and projections of his work have been held in St. Louis, Dhaka, London, Geneva, Nairobi, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Washington, DC, and at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. His first book, "Kenya’s Nubians: Then & Now," was published in late 2011 and his second, "Exiled To Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya," in May 2012. Constantine and reporter Stephanie Hanes worked together on the Pulitzer Center-supported 2012 reporting project "Statelessness: A Human Rights Crisis." The National Press Photographers Association recently named the related Pulitzer Center-produced e-book "In Search of Home" one of the best Tablet/Mobile Delivery projects of the year. The e-book focuses on stateless people from Kenya, Burma and the Dominican Republic.