Culture

In June 2008, The Pulitzer Center partnered with Helium to continue its third round of the Global Issues/Citizen Voices Writing Contest. Contestants chose topics for their essays from prompts related to different Pulitzer Center reporting projects. Find their winning essays below.

How does stigma and discrimination, as witnessed in Jamaica, perpetuate the global HIV/AIDS epidemic?
Read winning essay by Glynnis Hayward

"The Book Bench," an online blog of The New Yorker's Books section, recently featured Kwame Dawes and the Pulitzer Center project Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica.

"Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica," a website featuring Pulitzer grantee Kwame Dawes, has been selected as "Today's webpick" by Communication Arts, the graphic design magazine.

In 2007 Ghanaian-Jamaican writer Kwame Dawes embarked on a research trip to Jamaica to explore the experience of people living with HIV/AIDS and to examine the ways in which the disease was shaping their lives.

Dawes responded to this experience through poems that capture the rich humanity of those he met and the complex emotions that come from contending so intimately with issues of mortality, stigma and grace. Dawes and his long-time collaborator, composer Kevin Simmonds, set the poems to music that showcases the spirit of Dawes's work.

"Positive Outlook," a Pulitzer Center-commissioned video that follows one HIV+ campaign speaker as she tries to stamp out the stigma of the disease, aired on DePauw University's The World is Talking television program. The program aired on April 14, 2008.

View the video and the rest of the program on The World is Talking blog.

Another Pulitzer Center-commissioned video, "Talking HIV in Jamaica," will air on the next The World is Talking program.

John Lundberg, the poetry columnist for the Huffington Post, featured a terrific review of Kwame's poetry and the interactive site created for Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica.

Read it here.

LiveHopeLove.com poet Kwame Dawes was recently awarded the National AIDS Committee Jamaica Leadership Award for his work with LiveHopeLove.com. The award, presented by the National AIDS Committee Jamaica commemorates leadership, excellence, and dedication to the field of HIV and AIDS in Jamaica. The award will be presented on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2009.

The Pulitzer Center's interactive website LiveHopeLove.com was chosen as Adobe's Site of the Day for April 5, 2008. The site, designed by bluecadet Interactive, is part of the Pulitzer Center's multimedia reporting project "Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica."

OneWorld.net's April 1 Today's News section features the Pulitzer Center "Hope: Living and Loving with HIV/AIDS in Jamaica" project. For this project, poet and writer Kwame Dawes traveled to Jamaica to tell the stories of those living with the disease or caring for others. The result is a collection of essays, poems, video, music and photographs that capture a range of emotions and speak to resilience, hope and possibility often in the face of despair.

In March 2008, The Pulitzer Center partnered with Helium to launch its first round of the Global Issues/Citizen Voices Contest. Find the winning essays here.

ENOUGH is sponsoring a video contest to raise awareness of the connection between the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the world's demand for electronic products - especially cell phones.

Photojournalist Carlos Villalon has worked for news organizations around the world. He traveled throughout eastern Congo between April and June of 2006, documenting the impact of war, coltan mining and trade on daily life. The Pulitzer Center is pleased to present his work and commentary here, as a supplement to the Center's own project on Congo.