2015-09-23
BRUSSELS – The second application round for our intercontinental working grant programme, Connecting Continents, was closed on 17 August 2015. With the jury meeting having taken place, it’s time for a detailed look at the statistics of applications and grants.
For the second application round, 89 African and European journalists got together to file a total of 28 applications, a significant increase from the 12 applications that were submitted (by 49 journalists) during the first application round in June.
The total number of applications we received over both rounds is 40. The jury allocated a grant to 10 of those. That means of course that 1 in 4 projects got a grant. On the total of 138 journalists who were involved in one or more of the 40 applications, there were 85 freelancers.
Finances
Across their 40 applications the 138 applicants asked for €518,328 in total. There was €100,000 to distribute. €50,000 was distributed in the first round, the other €50,000 in the second.
The jury distributed the whole €100,000 to the 10 grantees, which means that the average grant was €10,000. The biggest grant was €18,500, the smalles €3,000.
Applicants
Over the two application rounds, 41 nationalities were involved. The Netherlands was the best-represented country (of residence) among the applicants (23), followed by the UK (13), Belgium (12), South-Africa and Italy (both 8) and Nigeria (7). Most applications were submitted by freelancers (85 out of a total of 138 applicants). The average application team consisted of about 3.5 people and asked for €12,958.
Grantees
If we look at the journalists who received a grant – 52 in total – we see that most grantees live in The Netherlands and the UK (both 8), followed by South Africa (7) and Italy (6). Belgium, despite having 12 applicants, only has 1 grantee.
In total, 33 of the 52 grantees (63%) reside in Europe (or the US), while the other 19 (37%) live in Africa. Not bad for a pilot project, but something to work on in the case of a continuation of the programme.
The average grantee team consisted of 5.2 people. 32% of the grantees were women, slightly higher than the relative number of female applicants (27%).
