Application Deadline: April 15th 2021
A Digital Path to Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Latin America is creating a network of journalists, technologists and media entrepreneurs across the region.
This network is harnessing the power of digital tools to create sustainable news businesses that provide news and information in the public interest.
Since 2015, ICFJ, with funding from the U.S. Department of State, has brought more than 170 Latin American journalists, entrepreneurs, technologists and digital media experts to train and work at media organizations throughout the United States. Nearly 30 U.S. media hosts have visited Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia and Brazil to expand their cross-border collaborations.
Latin American fellows are placed with digital-first media organizations, the digital teams of traditional media and innovative start-ups. Hosts so far have included the Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, AJ+, Fusion, Splash Media and the Huffington Post. The goal is for participants to launch digital media products in their own countries or develop business models to make existing projects more sustainable.
During the program, participants have launched or improved projects including:
- An online investigative outlet in Colombia
- A popular personal finance blog in Nicaragua
- An LGBT community network which was founded in collaboration with multiple fellows in Colombia
- A new platform, called Floods Alerts, which sends messages to citizens endangered by floods in the Amazonian cities of Brazil.
A virtual fellowship for 50 Professional Fellows from 12 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru. Selected Latin American fellows will participate in a fifteen-weeks virtual program:
- The program begins with one week ICFJ-led virtual orientation, where fellows receive hands-on training on digital tools and techniques and workshop their digital media project proposals with media entrepreneurs, while creating a safe space for collaboration and learning.
- Followed by six full weeks of professional virtual newsroom attachments. The program pairs fellows with U.S. hosts across the country at digital communications firms, startup incubators and cutting-edge digital newsrooms based on their backgrounds, skills and project proposals. During the virtual newsroom embed, fellows will receive an opportunity to meet and learn from different teams in the newsroom through online platforms.
- Each fellow will also receive a grant of $1,700 towards their digital project and will have an opportunity to work with mentors in the course of eight weeks, in order to drive their personal digital projects to success.
Deadline to apply is April 15, 2021.
A Digital Path to Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Latin America is part of the Professional Fellows Program of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Exchange and Cultural Affairs.
Officia Website: ICFJ -A Digital Path to Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Latin America
