NEW YORK – As part of a wider effort to strengthen communities in the United States and around the world, the Open Society Institute today announced a special Katrina Media Fellowship competition as well as grants to eight frontline nonprofits working in the devastated Gulf Region.

OSI’s U.S. Programs expects to award between 12 and 15 journalism fellowships in June 2006 for the one-time competition. The grants will support exceptional print and radio journalists, photographers, and documentary filmmakers to help foster a national conversation on race and class inequalities that Hurricane Katrina laid bare.

OSI’s Katrina Media Fellows will receive between $15,000 and $35,000; special consideration will be given to applicants who have been displaced from or are residents of the Gulf Region. By supporting in-depth journalism projects, OSI hopes to improve media coverage and deepen public understanding of the persistent problems of poverty, racism, and government neglect.

OSI is also providing $815,000 to eight nonprofit groups in the South whose work has been interrupted by the storm, paying special attention to the most urgent needs of low-income people of color, immigrants, and women to ensure that their voices are heard as the recovery moves forward.

The eight grants, awarded in November, include support for local and national organizations to monitor post-Katrina efforts and assure that equity and social justice are given paramount importance. The grants encourage those most affected by Katrina to get involved in shaping policy and rebuilding their communities.

The organizations supported by OSI are helping to provide legal representation to immigrants, document the cases of incarcerated people whose records were lost in the storm, and involve low-income young people and women of color in shaping policy.

The Hurricane Katrina funding reflects OSI’s commitment to ensuring that the interests of the most vulnerable people are at the forefront of policy. OSI over the past decade has spent some $742 million in the United States to strengthen human rights, access to justice, education, professionalism in law and medicine, palliative care, and to ensure the inclusion of everyone in the democratic process.

Grantees

The following organizations received funding to help restore communities in the Gulf Region:

Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC): $185,000 to support legal representation of immigrants affected by the storm, including the undocumented and those who lost documents, the elderly, disabled, refugees, detainees, and laborers.

Critical Resistance/Justice Now: $40,000 to rebuild offices and regional chapters; to assist families of the incarcerated, attorneys, and community leaders in documenting the stories of prisoners who are not being released because their cases were disrupted by Katrina; and to encourage the fair treatment of individuals who were arrested post-Katrina for alleged looting and theft.

Ms. Foundation for Women, Inc.: $60,000 to map and assess the needs of low-income women of color in the flood-affected region and develop strategies to help these women play a role in influencing policies and programs.

National Immigration Law Center: $195,000 to ensure that immigrants are not overlooked or exploited in disaster recovery efforts; to support community-based organizations serving immigrant survivors; to produce community education materials; and to coordinate response efforts with other regional and national coalitions addressing the needs of immigrants, and all hurricane survivors.

Pacific News Service: $35,000 to complete and distribute the results of the New America Media multilingual poll of ethnic Americans on the lessons of Hurricane Katrina.

Southern Partners Fund: $75,000 to provide relief and support to grassroots organizations located in affected areas of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, enabling them to regain operational capacity.

Sound Portraits – StoryCorps: $150,000 to provide continued support for StoryCorps’ two permanent booths in New York City as well as support for two mobile StoryBooths which will travel to New Orleans and other locations in the Gulf Coast region to collect the stories of those affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Students at the Center: $75,000 to continue an intensive writing and media program for displaced youth from New Orleans’ most under-resourced public high-schools, and to ensure these students’ participation in developing post-Katrina public education.

View a more detailed description of grantee activities.

View the Katrina Media Fellowship guidelines.