The Overseas Project

Funded by the Sigrid Rausing Trust

There are still many countries in the world where freelancers struggle alone in order to provide articles, documentaries and news footage of crises in their own countries. They are often unsupported by any major media organization, and probably ignorant of the existence of the Rory Peck Trust and its capacity to help them.

The generous Sigrid Rausing donation this year gives us a real opportunity to extend the reach of the Trust. The main aim of the international project this year is to identify those people around the world who need our help, whether it is the families of journalists who have been killed in the course of their work, or the journalists themselves who have been injured. We also want to make the hostile environment training that can help to protect freelancers in war zones available in these countries.

Locally based freelance media professionals are highly motivated, courageous and multi-skilled. Attuned to local conditions, skilled in the field, they are infinitely more streetwise in their own culture than someone coming in from outside. The fact that they exist is a major boon to broadcasters, newspapers and magazines who cannot always afford to have a staff member in the right place at the right time. After all a story can break at any moment anywhere around the world.

The support of freelance journalists is not just of vital humanitarian concern, but the insider's view they can provide is a key component of balanced reporting, extending the boundaries of free speech.

I hope that our work will facilitate the work of the media in general, by helping freelancers tell us those stories around the world that are just waiting to be told. And this without the freelancers themselves having to pay too high a price for the privilege of the information that they bring us.

Melanie Anstey, Project Director

Supported by:

• And the Issue is ...
  Raising Funds
• Why the Trust
• How the Rory Peck Trust Helps
• From Sony
• The Rory Peck Training Fund
• The Overseas Project
• Inmarsat - Media Reporting Revolutionised
• You Can Help
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