South American team awarded HSF grant to report on climate change on the Inca Trail
A team of journalists in Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina has been awarded our 2025 Historias Sin Fronteras reporting grant for a cross-border project on the impact of climate change on the Inca Trail, an extensive road network of almost 19,000 miles constructed by the Incas through one of the world’s most extreme geographical terrains.
The Qhapaq Ñan, as the Inca Trail is known in the Quechua language, spans six South American countries through the snow-capped peaks of the Andes to the coast, running through tropical rainforests, fertile valleys and harsh deserts.
The journalists will follow the road that connects their story to Indigenous communities in four South American countries as they report on ways that people are adapting to confront climate change as they preserve their ancestral heritage. Theirs is a story of resilience, which is often absent in today’s international climate change discussion.
The journalists will produce interactive infographics and capture compelling images at this UNESCO World Heritage Site. We plan to publish their multimedia project in the summer of 2025.
Historias Sin Fronteras received 30 outstanding proposals from teams of journalists throughout Latin America in response to our call for projects on adaptation, mitigation and resilience as responses to climate change.
In selecting the proposal by the South American team, the judges noted the project “takes readers on a journey down this road to learn about the climate resiliency projects that are happening in each country.”
“This project pitch embodies not only the spirit of the call for proposals, but of Historias Sin Fronteras,” the judges wrote. “You could not do this story without a multi, cross-border collaboration. It blends Latin American/Incan history and the current climate challenges well.”
This grant is funded with the generous support of individual donors who believe in the importance of climate and environment reporting by Latin American journalists.
InquireFirst awarded the grant to:
Oscar Bermeo Ocaña, an environmental journalist based in Peru, who has written for the environmental news site Mongabay Latam since 2019. He has reported on biodiversity and conservation projects, deforestation, and social problems created by climate change.
Oscar was a Climate Tracker fellow and he has participated in climate mentoring programs, where he wrote about the need for an energy transition in Peru. In 2024, he was a climate research fellow with the Center for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) and CONNECTAS, where he explored the challenges of ecosystem restoration in Peru.
Clara Ferrer Puccio, is an Argentine journalist who has worked for media outlets such as La Voz del Interior, the largest news organization in the country’s interior, and Climate Tracker International.
In 2022, Clara was selected for Climate Tracker’s Media Fellowship. During the program, she conducted three investigations into the impact of climate change in Argentina.
She has reported on the complex relationships between environment and society, conducting investigations and reporting on subjects such as wildlife trafficking, access to drinking water, forest fires, pollution and climate negotiations.
Simón Zapata is a Colombian journalist with a background in community journalism that has allowed him to tell stories from the ground up and highlight environmental struggles, human rights violations, and the resistance of grassroots communities. Through El Cuarto Mosquetero, an alternative media outlet, Simón has conducted investigative reporting on the environmental impacts of extractive projects, water conflicts, and environmental crimes in the Amazon rainforest, as well as social initiatives for environmental conservation.
He was a finalist for the Historias con Propósito award for his special report on the impact of small hydroelectric plants in Antioquia, in the Andes in northwest Colombia. He currently coordinates an hour-long live broadcast focusing on the environment and is leading an investigation with the support of a CONNECTAS grant on the public health impacts of mercury use in gold mining in the Guainía region of Colombia.
Natalie Gilbert is a Chilean journalist who co-founded the digital media outlet Proyectoaurora.cl, which focuses on the environment, human rights and Indigenous people.
She is also in charge of communications at the Mapuche Association Ad Kimvn and co-host of the podcast “Old Age Behind Bars: Older Women Sentenced Under Drug Law in Chile.”
Iván Carrillo, a Mexico-based science editor and writer and co-founder of Historias Sin Fronteras, will serve as project editor. Iván is part of the 2016-2017 generation of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT. He is a contributor to National Geographic and the Latin American editions of Newsweek and has collaborated with the Discovery Channel and CNN en Español.
More Awards
Logan Foundation supports InquireFirst programs for Latin American journalists
We’re proud to announce that the Reva & David Logan Foundation is providing support for our 2024-2025 programs for Latin American journalists.
The Logan Foundation said its aim is “to help advance InquireFirst’s role in maintaining a robust journalism ecosystem in Latin America through programs that promote cross-border investigations and help advance the careers and skills of early-career journalists.”
With the support of the Logan Foundation, we’ve had an extraordinary year highlighted by wide-ranging reporting programs for Latin American journalists and recognition from three international journalism awards.
By the close of 2024, InquireFirst will have brought 55 Latin American journalists from 10 countries, including Cuba, to the U.S.-Mexico border for week-long reporting trips. These trips, which provide unprecedented access to U.S. officials and NGOs, offer Latin American journalists the opportunity to conduct nuanced reporting on the complex policy issues and the human drama of immigration.
Journalists who have participated in the five trips organized by InquireFirst this year have traveled to El Paso, Tucson, San Diego, the Rio Grande Valley and New York City.
At the same time, InquireFirst has been awarded three international journalism awards for projects on climate change and the environment that we have brought from idea to reporting and writing to publication with grants and editorial support for Latin American journalists.
In additional, a team of four early-career journalists in Quito was awarded Honorable Mention for Reporting in Digital Media by the National Journalists’ Union of Ecuador in February 2024 for their compassionate, science-based project titled ‘In the bubble: how to survive Down Syndrome in Ecuador,’ which they reported and wrote during our seven-week Voces Emergentes Ecuador program.
The Reva & David Logan Foundation is a Chicago-based family foundation that provides strategic grants to support social justice, the arts, and investigative journalism in Chicago and around the world.
Arnold Ventures provides support for InquireFirst programs
It’s our pleasure to report that Arnold Ventures is providing support for our 2025 programs for Latin American journalists.
In partnership with Arnold Ventures, we’re looking forward to providing professional development and reporting grants for numerous journalists in Mexico, Central America and South America over the course of this year.
In awarding the grant, Arnold Ventures cited InquireFirst for its persistence in finding ways to collaborate with Latin American journalists and support their work as they report on important issues ranging from climate change to immigration.
InquireFirst, founded nine years ago in San Diego, California, has grown to a prize-winning organization that has reached hundreds of Latin American journalists with Spanish-language training programs, fully-funded reporting trips, and reporting grants to support nuanced, in-depth multimedia projects. Our nonprofit organization places a special emphasis on working with early-career journalists and supporting cross-border investigative reporting on climate and the environment.
Arnold Ventures is a Houston-based philanthropy founded in 2008 by Laura and John Arnold that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through evidence-based policy solutions that maximize opportunity and minimize injustice. The foundation provides grants to more than 60 communications organizations to increase reporting capacity primarily in three areas: investigative journalism, covering policy in state capitals, and single subject websites that dovetail with the foundation’s research interests.
En Común on the air for fifth season of programing
We’re back on the air for a fifth season of En Común: conocimento en voz viva, our science, environmental and health radio program that is tailored for rural and Indigenous communities in Mexico and reported primarily by Indigenous journalists.
This season we’re airing 20 episodes that focus on in-depth subjects ranging from exoplanets and astrobiology to the conservation of Mayan aquafers to the study of 7,000+ species of mushrooms that are native to Mexico.
The radio program shares the voices of Indigenous people while our reporters – many of them Indigenous journalists working for the first time with an international media organization – record the cultural traditions of people in their communities.
En Común co-founder and executive producer Iván Carrillo and InquireFirst Executive Director Lynne Walker have formed alliances with regional and national radio networks in Mexico that make it possible for the weekly program to reach millions of listeners in communities stretching from Baja California to Chiapas.
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SYMPOSIUMS
World Conference of Science Journalists
MEDELLIN, Colombia — When we organize a workshop at InquireFirst, we put journalists to work!
That’s exactly what happened during our day-long March 27 workshop at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Medellin. Almost 40 journalists from 14 countries joined us for our Historias Sin Fronteras workshop, which focused on strengthening science, health and environmental journalism through cross-border reporting.
MERIDA, Mexico – “There’s no more important work than the work being done by journalists,” said Brian O’Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, during a February 2020 environmental investigative journalism workshop organized by InquireFirst.
As the world witnesses a “massive acceleration in extinction” of species, coverage of
MEDELLIN, Colombia – InquireFirst Executive Director Lynne Walker met with journalists in Medellín and Cali, Colombia, July 29-August 3 to discuss new techniques for conducting investigative reporting.
During the programs organized by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, Walker led interactive sessions with journalists who cover
LAUSANNE, Switzerland – We’re pleased to announce that InquireFirst has awarded our first reporting grants to a team of Latin American science writers to support their work on a cross-border regional health story.
The reporters on the team were selected during our Jack F. Ealy Science Journalism Workshop, which was
MEXICO CITY – “Writing is music…language can be used in so many creative ways,” Deborah Blum, director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT, told almost 30 science and health journalists attending our regional workshop in Mexico City.
As Blum lead journalists through an interactive workshop on narrative science
FULLERTON, Calif. – Top U.S. journalists joined InquireFirst as speakers at our “Transparency and Investigative Reporting” workshop Feb. 25-March 1, when Latin American journalists traveled to Southern California to attend sessions on fact-checking, in-depth investigative reporting, cyber security and reporting with drones.
Among our speakers were:
Ginger Thompson, senior reporter
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador -- S. Lynne Walker, President and Executive Director of InquireFirst, traveled to Guayaquil and Quito, Ecuador, in January 2019 to instruct a series of interactive workshops titled “Investigative Journalism in High-Risk Situations.”
In Guayaquil, journalists from newspapers, television networks and online news sites participated in a nine-hour interactive
PALO ALTO, Calif. – Latin American science journalists were presented with a host of new professional development opportunities during the Jack F. Ealy Science Journalism Workshop at Stanford University.
The June 17-21, 2018 workshop, organized by InquireFirst and Mexico City-based Fundación Ealy Ortiz, focused on training opportunities – with Latin
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica – Science and health journalism should not be limited by international borders. Complex new health threats such as Zika virus that occur in a “noisy” media environment require a new model of reporting, Andrew Revkin, strategic adviser on science and environmental journalism for The National Geographic
MEXICO CITY – Prominent Mexican journalist Carmen Aristegui said the internet presents “a great light and a great shadow ” for journalism in an era of fake news
On the opening day of a journalism TechCamp in Mexico City, Aristegui acknowledged “there is serious questioning” of the
