The Right Livelihood Award Foundation is today launching a small grant scheme to promote reporting on ‘under-reported stories’ linked to the work of the 166 Laureates of the Swedish award known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’.

Open to journalists worldwide, Reporting Right Livelihood grants will cover reasonable travel, accommodation and communication costs related to the selected story, as well as a modest honorarium. A total of five small grants will be disbursed in 2017. Applications close on 15 June.

“With shrinking media budgets around the world, many newsworthy stories on real solutions to global challenges are missing out on being reported. More than 160 ‘Alternative Nobel’ Laureates provide fertile ground for such stories. Through this new grant scheme, we wish to support impartial, high-quality journalism on the issues that matter,” said the Foundation’s Executive Director Ole von Uexkull.

Successful applicants will be selected by Right Livelihood Award Laureates, as well as senior journalism and media capacity building experts from Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The five grantees for 2017 will be announced on 1 July.

Özgür Mumcu, a columnist with the leading independent Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, recognised with the 2016 Right Livelihood Award for its fearless investigative reporting and whose 11 journalists and staff remain in prison, said: “Press freedom is a pillar of democracy and a guarantee of people’s empowerment.

In countries where crackdowns on media happen on a regular basis, it is also a question of survival: either the journalists who are in prison will join the rest of us in a free democratic society or we will join them in prisons.”

Also joining this year’s selection committee, Martin Schibbye (Sweden), Editor-in-Chief of the Blank Spot Project and recipient of the Press Freedom Prize, said: “Working as a journalist is one the most dangerous things one can do these days. It is journalists who get jailed, shot and kidnapped. At the same time, they play a crucial role in a democracy. I look forward to supporting quality journalism, empowering colleagues, sharing knowledge and creating networks.”

Additional information and application form are available from: http://www.rightlivelihoodaward.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Reporting-Right-Livelihood-application-form.pdf