Impact Journalism Day, stories that spark change
The Day, organized by Sparknews, gathers 40 partner newspapers around the world to publish on September 20th a news supplement on positive and innovative solutions that make the world a better place. These newspapers will reach 100 million readers and impact their lives.
di Staff
Sharing stories of hope, change and innovation, focusing on solutions rather than problems. That’s Impact Journalism.
For the second year, Sparknews, a start-up of French journalists with a social mission to share inspiring stories from the world through its open source and collaborative solution based video- platform and with news media, organizes Impact Journalism Day.
“Readers all over the world today are hungry for stories with a difference. Stories that bring hope and concrete solutions, at both local and global level. They are looking for signs of change they can identify with. Change that will make them think… and act. The media has a key role to play in this – to alert us about problems AND share solutions. This is called Impact Journalism” explains Sparknews founder Christian de Boisredon in an article posted on The Straits Times.
In 2013 Sparknews launched the first annual Impact Journalism Day. 22 leading newspapers from across the globe published a news supplement dedicated to positive and innovative solutions that make the world a better place. It was an unprecedented operation, enabling 50 million readers to know about innovative and inspiring projects.
The projects fall into many categories: environmental, health, education, and energy, to name a few.
The second edition of Impact Journalism Day will take place on September 20th 2014 and will gather 40 newspapers across the world, among which: Le Monde (France), The Sunday Times (UK), La Nación (Argentina), La Stampa (Italy), la Presse (Canada), and the Straits Times (Singapore). Together with Sparknews, these newspapers will select 101 innovative projects with high social impact to feature within their pages or in dedicated supplements. These projects will offer concrete solutions to today’s pressing issues. The goal? To inspire readers to become actors of change in their own right. Impact Journalism Day works on sharing: each newspaper will offer the stories of the most inspiring change makers and creative innovations in their country to the other partners.
From Copenhagen to the Niger delta, to Mumbai and Miami these 40 newspapers will reach and impact the life of 100 million readers altogether who will read stories of real, innovative solutions from around the world.
MakeSense, a global open network connecting social entrepreneurs with people ready to take up their challenges, has teamed up with Impact Journalism Day to multiply the impact that readers can have. The network encourages readers to buy their editions of IJD and take action, helping social entrepreneurs solve their challenges and engage for a project they want to help. On September 20th readers will find out which stories have been highlighted and how they can get involved in helping them tackle a problem. MakeSense will run a selfie contest on the day itself. Alongside, workshops run by MakeSense will be aimed at solving project-specific challenges.
