Pulitzer Center 2024 Impact Seed Fund.

Impact Seed Funding (ISF) is a micro-scale grant provided by the Pulitzer Center to support education activities with the aim to enrich the perspectives and knowledge of the university community— specifically students and educators—about the problems, solutions, and innovations related to the impact of human activities in tropical forests, ocean, and the climate crisis. We aim to support projects that inspire changes in perspectives, narratives, and actions among communities as its ultimate impact. In this way, the main goal of the grant is to create more informed and empathetic communities about the underreported issues of the rainforest and climate change. The ISF is designed to be flexible and responsive to the needs of educators and communities, allowing applicants to establish activities related to pressing issues of the rainforest, the ocean and the climate crisis.

The Pulitzer Center has supported reporting that works on underreported issues in tropical forests for the past years, especially via two journalism funding funds: Rainforest Journalism Fund and Rainforest Investigative Network. In 2023, we also started a grant program for stories with a focus on discussing ocean-related topics. Based on these stories, the ISF proposes to fund activities related to education and engagement of the university community specifically on these two topics: tropical forests and ocean.

Benefits

ISF grants range from US$2,000 to US$4,000 (US dollars). We expect projects to be implemented and concluded within five months of approval.

Type of activities we fund

Examples of activities and desirable outcomes of ISF support may include, but are not limited to:

Educational material development: Incorporating Pulitzer Center journalism into teaching materials and syllabus, field trip program, active citizenship training.
Engagement with students, academia and public: Student writing competition, debate, public dialogue, exhibition on campus, hackathons.
Research support and dissemination of findings: This may include updating ongoing research and incorporating new insights in a book chapter, organizing a seminar.
Content production and dissemination including short videos, documentaries, podcasts.

Requirements

Applicants should be professors or researchers in a higher education institution, or groups of students guided by a responsible professor, and not have the project applied in Africa, Brazil, or Southeast Asia, as these areas have their own ISF grant. Projects carried out through consortia of professors are also very welcome.