Positive News, an organization that produces solutions journalism, has been awarded a grant to finance a year-long series of articles. The goal is to focus on the mental health of communities in the Global South. These grassroots projects have boosted well-being despite limited funding. Traditional newspapers have not covered mental health issues in the developing world, despite the fact that it is a problem that underpins almost every challenge in global development. This includes poverty, gender inequality, and educational attainment. Mental health has been identified as a key priority in international development by the United Nations.
The grant has helped Positive News to train journalists from Britain, Zimbabwe, and Kenya in solutions journalism. The training will give the journalists insight into reporting on creative, grassroots approaches to improve well-being. The series kicks off with a focus on community-led projects that are boosting mental health in the developing world. The funding has enabled Positive News to spread solutions journalism further than ever before.
Positive News has been a pioneer in terms of solutions journalism since 1993. They believe that people deserve a more balanced and optimistic view of the world than traditional media provides. The grant has given Positive News the opportunity to cast their net wider in terms of the scope of their stories. In the first three months of the series, Positive News gave one-on-one solutions journalism training to the journalists who were commissioned to write the first stories. The journalists found these sessions inspirational and illuminating.
The journalists noted that it is unusual to find an outlet for stories on mental health in the Global South. Newspapers typically cover health in these regions through the angle of well-funded issues like sanitation and disease prevention. Positive News has started to uncover tales of lives being transformed via low-cost, replicable, grassroots mental healthcare. As the series unfolds, Positive News hopes to report on many more stories of resilience and hope from across the globe
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