Funding for Students

As part of the Student Media Programme, students at participating courses will be eligible to apply for modest funding to help them go to a developing country and make a piece of media as part of their course.

Please note that this opportunity is only open to students who are on courses that are participating with the Student Media Programme. Also, any student who applies for a bursary must have sat at least one of the One World workshops being delivered to courses as part of the project.

Why offer funding?

The bursaries exist to give students on journalism or documentary filmmaking courses in the UK the opportunity to cover a story in a developing country as part of their course, and to bring this story to a wider audience. It aims to increase the diversity of stories covered by emerging journalists and filmmakers.

The bursaries are set up to run in parallel with the two-day workshop being delivered to courses around the UK. While the workshop aims to share practical skills on reporting and filming in the developing world, the bursaries take this one step further by allowing successful students to go overseas and put this learning into practice.

What do we offer?

Each year, One World Media will make available 5-10 bursaries of up to £1000 each. Eligible students can apply for a bursary by filling out an application form and supplying a summary of what they want to make, along with a budget and a reference from their tutor.

In addition, One World Media is working with Centurion, a leading provider of hostile environment training, to offer a free five-day hostile environment course to some of the bursary recipients. A selected number of the students who receive funding will also be offered this course, free of charge.

In the 2010-11 academic year, funding is likely to open in semester 2 (January 2011). Please check this page for updates.

What kind of films or other media are we looking for?

The Student Media Fund supports media that is made, at least in part, in the developing world. The Fund is otherwise quite broad in its remit, and looks forward to receiving a wide variety of applications. However, in general the panel will be interested in proposals that:

Highlight the voices of people living in the developing world, particularly voices that are not often heard
Recognise the importance of characters and storytelling as a means by which audiences can be engaged with an issue
Have considered ethical issues and safety (though a full risk assessment is not required at this stage)
Do not simply cover negative aspects of the developing world without considering the context in which they exist

For a geographical definition of the developing world, we use the guidelines laid out by the One World Media Awards: Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East or the Post-Soviet States (excluding EU members).

What if you want to go back to your own country?

One World Media sometimes receives applications from people who are from a developing country, and who wish to return to that country to make their piece of media.

The bursaries are primarily about providing students with a unique learning experience. For this reason, we generally encourage students to go to parts of the world that are relatively new to them. By going through the process of preparing to travel, obtaining access, assessing risk and overcoming unforeseen challenges, it is hoped that they will derive maximum benefit from the experience.

However, we also acknowledge that some stories require a particularly high level of access, and this can only be obtained by someone who is from the country in question. So, the panel will consider proposals to go back to someone's own country, but will take issues such as access into account.

Please note that if you wish to go to a country that you have already visited - perhaps you travelled there last year and heard about an interesting story - your previous visit will not count against you.