As I had mentioned back in August [1], YouTube [2] and The Pulitzer Center [3] have launched Project: Report [4], a contest for aspiring journalists and now the full rules and instructions are up. The contest and awards are limited to participants who are legal residents of countries where YouTube is officially launched: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Korea, New Zealand, Spain, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), and the fifty United States and District of Columbia. The first assignment out of three consists of submitting a 3 minute or less video in English (or with English subtitles) where you profile a person in your community you think the rest of the world should know about.
As an example of the type of story and delivery they are looking for, they have uploaded a series of videos to assist future journalists who aspire to win the $10 000 USD fellowship and laptop computer award: A series of three videos follow reporter Tracy Chung as she thinks up and records material for a video, with advice on the how to best tell your story (One [5], two [6], three [7]). Another video [8] has Pulitzer Center-sponsored journalist, Beth Murphy giving advice on choosing a good character for your profile. As an example for contestants to follow, they have selected a video of Iraq war veteran Kirk Johnson [9] who is dedicating himself to aiding those Iraqis who have assisted the US and whose lives are now endangered because of it.
The following are other profile examples they have listed on the contest's YouTube channel. The first is Simon Mothibi, a South African special Olympics athlete brings hope to his family, as uploaded by avmendes1 [10]:
This next one comes from Tanzania [11], where Camfed international [12], an organization centered on providing girls in Africa with an education, tells the story of a young girl, Yacinta, who dropped out of school to work as a domestic servant for 1.5 years, just so she could save enough to pay her school fees: Camfed offered to pay her tuition, and now she is studying so in the future she is able to pay for her siblings education.
The full rules for the YouTube Project:Report [4] can be found here. [13] The deadline for this first stage is October 5th. So, for all those diaspora bloggers living in one of the eligible countries, or for legal residents of them who are living elsewhere, this is a great opportunity to make your heroes known to the world.