Berlin Scholarship Program 2023 to Empower Young Journalists from Crisis Areas

Berlin Scholarship Program 2023 | The Reporters Without Borders Germany is invited Journalists, bloggers, media professionals from Crisis Areas and citizen journalists to apply for Berlin Scholarship Program 2023 as well as Empowering them in the Digital Field. check available scholarship

The goal of Reporters Without Borders Germany is to help journalists protect themselves against harassment and persecution and enable them to continue or resume their journalistic work in their home country. They support journalists through scholarships that give them the opportunity to train and expand their skills, make a fresh start in their career, or simply take some time out from stressful working conditions.

Scholarship:

Reporters Without Borders Germany offers journalists from war zones and crisis areas the opportunity to take a break in Berlin for four months and complete a training program in digital security.

The program is funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises.

Aims:

• To provide participants with practical knowledge and skills to protect themselves against digital threats such as surveillance or hacker attacks in their journalistic activities
• In a second phase, with the support of the trainer team, the participants prepare their own training concept, through which they can pass on their newly acquired knowledge to colleagues in their home countries as trainers.
• In this way, journalists outside the scholarship program can also benefit from the digital security skills taught in the program.

Benefit:

• Successful candidate will receive monthly grant allowance of 900€/month
• scholarships cover the travel costs
• scholarships provide and pay for an apartment in Berlin for the duration of the scholarship,
• free use of public transportation in Berlin and an extensive training program with qualified experts in the field of digital security

• Furthermore, during their stay in Berlin, scholarship holders will be given insights into the activities of Reporters Without Borders Germany, a globally-active journalist and human rights organization.

Main topics of the digital security training:

• Holistic security basics for journalists, bloggers, media professionals and citizen journalists at risk
• Operational security including risk assessments and security planning
• Online identity management for investigative journalists, including technical background and practical use of anonymization tools
• Secure online communication concepts, technology and tools, including secure online conferencing for interviews
• Password and account security and data protection on social media and other online accounts for media work
• Device security for computers and mobile phones of journalists at risk
• Website security for media websites under attack
• Secure online and offline data storage including encryption for media files
• Online information verification and Open Source Intelligence

Eligibility:

• Professional journalists, bloggers, media professionals and citizen journalists who are exposed to digital threats due to their work in their home regions.
• Professional journalists, bloggers, media professionals and citizen journalists who want to learn and work extensively with digital security in order to improve their personal security.
• Professional journalists, bloggers, media professionals and citizen journalists who are interested in passing on the knowledge acquired during the scholarship program to colleagues in their home regions and, ideally, already have some experience in teaching or other areas of knowledge transfer.
• Professional journalists, bloggers, media professionals and citizen journalists who are able and willing to fully participate in the program. We expect the applicants to be available for all activities of our program including the comprehensive training for digital security. Please plan with about 20 to 25 hours per week from the second until the fourth month of your stay in Berlin

Requirements:

• Applicants must have a very strong command of the English language, as the whole scholarship program will be conducted entirely in English.
• Applicants must have adequate experience working as a journalist, be it as a professional journalist or a citizen journalist.
• A high level of proficiency in regards to digital security is not required; anyone who is used to working with a computer and smart phone can apply.
• Are able and willing to fully participate in all activites of the program (see above: Who can apply)
• In addition, applicants must show that they are willing to return to their home region after the fellowship in Germany.
• Previous teaching experience would be desirable.

How to Berlin Scholarship Program 2023 to Empower Young Journalists from Crisis Areas 

Please send a completed and signed application form, the completed questionnaire, your CV and a proof of identity(copy of your ID or your passport) as attachments in separate PDF documents (4 PDFs in total) via the Signal messenger service to +491636743853, or if you have a ProtonMail account to rsf.digitalfreedom[at]protonmail.com.

For more information Visit: Berlin Scholarship Program

Application Deadline:  Monday, December 5th 2022 at 23:59 (Central European Time).