Please see CJFE’s announcement below: CJFE announces 2012 International Press Freedom Award Winners 2012 International Press Freedom Award winner Mae Azango (CNW Group/Canadian Journalists for Free Expression) Media Mae Azango (Liberia) and Rami Jarrah (Syria) risked their lives to report the news in their countries TORONTO, Sept. 27, 2012 /CNW/ – Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE)…
NN’s Tecee Boley Named IJNET Journalist of the Month
New Narratives is delighted our senior fellow Tecee Boley has been named the International Journalists’ Network (IJNET) Journalist of the Month. Tecee joined NN in July 2010 and has since notched up a string of scoops and awards including a Pulitzer Center grant to cover Water and Sanitation issues and Liberia’s Development Reporter of the…
NN’s Mae Azango Wins Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award
New Narratives is delighted one of our senior fellows Mae Azango has been chosen as one of four international journalists to receive the 2012 Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award. The award recognizes Mae’s courage in reporting earlier this year on the health risks of female genital cutting in traditional societies in her…
‘Wrong Side of the Dice’: Ballah Scott’s Death Shows Health Care in Liberia Is No Care at All
Monrovia – Hospitals have always been an eerie place for me, with their sterile walls, bright blinding lights, and shadowed cracks and crevices. Despite my wariness, I am convinced that hospitals can be (and should be) safe havens. In most places around the world, hospitals are where the sick go to get better. In Liberia, however,…
165 Years Young And Counting: What Have We Really Got To Celebrate?
We Liberians know how to throw a good party. Whether we live in zinc shacks or in immaculate mansions, we thrive on celebration. I’ve been back in Monrovia from London only three weeks now and have already attended four graduation parties and one baby shower. For us, life is an endless party. That’s what…
Voices Against Genital Cutting: Survivors Speak Against Controversial practice in N.Y.
New York City – A young girl stood weeping while women danced happily around her. A grand celebration was already underway for the girl’s rite of passage. It would end with her circumcision and the women rejoicing. Against her will, the young girl who they called Ekankama, was knocked to the ground and held down by…
Going Home the Same Way They Came: Buduburam on My Mind as D-Day Nears
Perched on vast acres of land dotted with concrete buildings marked in colorful chalk, Buduburam Refugee Camp on the outskirts of Accra, Ghana, has always been a place of transit for Liberians. Camp dwellers are like expectant passengers on a flight whose destination is still undetermined. Most of them hope to land in America, or…
NN’s Mae Azango is Awarded the Minnie Lee Walker fellowship
NN is proud to announce our reporter Mae Azango, of FrontPage Africa, has been awarded a newly created reporting fellowship in honor of Minnie Lee Walker. The fellowship is given by the Alliance for East Africa, an organization that supports grass roots programs in Africa. It was started by Mrs Walker’s daughter Jean Wr. The…
NN’s Mae Azango on her time in hiding after reporting on FGC
One would never know how real or powerful fear is unless he or she experiences it. I lived with fear for over three weeks after I did a story on female genital cutting that was published on March 8, 2012. I knew this story would attract attention because we published it on International Women’s Day. …
Starting Small: Liberia’s Women Entrepreneurs Boost Agriculture Industry
Monrovia — On the outskirts of this capital city, Martha Partor runs what passes for a food processing business in this war-weary west African nation. It’s not high tech or big business. She packages local agricultural items such as pepper sauce, cassava leaf flour and potato greens powder in vacuum bags that are sold at…
NN’s Wade Williams on Liberia’s Entrepreneur Women
MONROVIA, Liberia — On the outskirts of this capital city, Martha Partor runs what passes for a food processing business in this war-weary west African nation. It’s not high tech or big business. She packages local agricultural items such as pepper sauce, cassava leaf flour and potato greens powder in vacuum bags that are…
NN’s Tecee Boley Selected for State Department Reporting Tour of US
New Narratives fellow Tecee Boley has been selected for a 10 day reporting tour of the United States looking at “Youth in Politics” in the lead up to the American election. Tecee was chosen by the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Press Center for the tour that will take her to Washington on June 10…
NN’s Prue Clarke in The Guardian on How Donors Limit Impact by Not Funding Media
Mae Azango is one courageous reporter. But she is also a potent weapon in the fight for human rights. Azango’s reporting on female genital cutting (FGC) in her native Liberia brought death threats and sent her and her nine-year-old daughter into hiding. Three weeks later, the Liberian government, having never dared speak publicly about the traditional practice, had taken steps to…
NN’s Wade Williams Wins Prestigious Dag Hammerskjold Fellowship
NN is madly proud of our reporter Wade Williams of FrontPage Africa newspaper for becoming one of four journalists chosen for the 2012 Dag Hammerskjold fellowship. Wade will spend three months in New York learning about the United Nations and covering the 2012 General Assembly. This fellowship follows Wade’s recent double victory at Liberia’s national…
NN’s Mae Azango guest speaker at conference in New York on Saturday
NN’s Mae Azango will be guest speaker at the Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation conference in New York City on June 16. The event will be held at the New York Academy of Medicine 1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street New York, NY Among the awardees at the awards event in the evening will be women’s rights…
Mae Azango exposed a secret ritual in Liberia, putting her life in danger
TODEE, LIBERIA It’s late afternoon in Todee, a village in rural Liberia, and the sun is starting to drop. Mae Azango settles into a taxi for the three-hour drive back to Monrovia, the capital. But this long day hasn’t been quite long enough. Ms. Azango, a journalist, needs to come back on Monday to finish reporting a…
Liberia’s Water Woes: Why Clean, Safe Water Is Still Out of Reach for Many Liberians
Monrovia: “Water! Water!” Eugene Seoh shouted from his three-story apartment building on Benson Street, a main avenue in the center of Monrovia. From across the road, water vendor Jerry Worlogar looked up and nodded. Seoh hurried down the stairs. He stood before Worlogar’s hand-drawn cart full of white five-gallon containers. “Thirty-five \[Liberian] dollars for one…
NN’s Mae Azango on US public radio’s “On The Media”
Brook Gladstone intro: When Liberian journalist Mae Azango wrote an article about the taboo topic of female genital mutilation, she and her nine year-old daughter became the targets of multiple threats. Brooke talks to Mae about her reporting that forced the Liberian government to finally take a public position on the practice. GUESTS: Mae Azango…
NN Executive Director Prue Clarke to appear at Deutsche Welle 2012 Global Media Forum
New Narratives’ Executive Director Prue Clarke will present at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn on June 25-27. Prue will join a panel entitled Gender in Journalism and Media Training with experts from Tunisia, Ethiopia, Germany and the USA. Please see more on the conference here and see a video about the conference here. …
Charles Taylor’s Verdict Proves What Goes Up Must Come Down
by New Narratives Fellow Robtel Neajai Pailey I was in The Hague on April 26 when they convicted Charles Taylor. Appearing like a child being publicly scolded, he stood on seemingly wobbly legs, head bowed, when they pronounced him guilty on 11 counts of crimes against humanity for aiding and abetting rebels during Sierra Leone’s…
NN’s Mae Azango in Foreign Policy magazine
Labor Pains In the midst of a civil war, becoming a mother was its own battle. Melinda Gates has me thinking about the time I became a mother. When the Gates Foundation co-chair recently said that improving family planning for the global poor is her new personal mission — and that she is making it a top…