News from Project Word
In The Boston Globe
Jon Mingle, an emerging freelance writer who had spent time in the Himalayas, found out about Project Word in February 2009. He came to us with a profile of indigenous Zanskari villagers and their surprising response to climate change.
Project Word helped him develop the piece for a newspaper or magazine. After some searching we found an editor who liked the work. We introduced its author and stepped aside. And in late November 2009, Mingle’s article appeared as a Sunday feature in The Boston Globe. PDF here.
Project Word Piece in the Boston Globe, November 2009. Text by Jon Mingle. Photos by Nicolas Villaume.
In Resurgence/Guernica
Project Word’s debut exploration of indigenous communities and climate change appeared in the September–October 2009 issue of the British magazine Resurgence.
The piece, an essay that grew out of the project director’s April trip to Arctic Village, Alaska, reported the effects of melting permafrost on Gwich’in caribou hunters, and their implications for the rest of us. In December it also appeared in the web magazine Guernica as a photo essay.
Caribou from the Porcupine herd rest on a plateau above the Chandalar River, in traditional Gwich'in territory, as they prepare to cross the distant Brooks Range, en route to their spawning grounds on the north slope, called Iizhik Gwats'an Gwandaii Goodl. Photo by Nicolas Villaume.
In Mother Jones
In mid-2009, veteran investigative Mark Schapiro was exploring the effects of a plan by three U.S. corporations to offset their carbon emissions by buying a forest in Brazil. Schapiro sought sources on the ground, including indigenous communities. Project Word set him up with a Guarani interpreter and helped him travel to Brazil. The result: an expose in the November–December Mother Jones accompanied by a PBS/Frontline piece, both amplifying the voices of “carbon refugees.”
Several Guarani families live on this island in southern Brazil, which sits near a controversial forest reserve. General Motors, Chevron, and American Electric Power, the largest U.S. operator of coal-fired power plants, bought the reserve to offset their greenhouse gas emissions. Photo by Nicolas Villaume.
In The Nation
In mid-2008, Bogota-based writer Teo Ballvé submitted a proposal to Project Word for an investigative piece—a report on the displacement of Afro-Colombian refugees for palm oil plantations, with the evident support of USAID.
Within months, The Nation commissioned the piece, after Project Word provided developmental editing. The article was posted in May 2009, ran in the June 15, 2009, magazine, generated media coverage, and earned numerous award nominations. PDF here.
[img_assist|nid=106|title=Teo Ballvé, the author of "The Dark Side of Plan Columbia," is a former editor of the NACLA Report on the Americas, the most widely-read English-language publication on Latin American affairs. In addition to this report for The Nation, his work has appeared in The Progressive, AlterNet, New America Media, Z Magazine and more than a dozen newspapers.|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=205|height=154]
Impossiblism
Project director Laird Townsend writes on the promise of the economic implosion for Resurgence magazine. PDF here.
Project Word piece in Resurgence magazine.