Intrepid Young Reporters Venture to Eastern Africa to Cover Positive Stories Ignored by Mainstream Media

Washington, DC – 9/24/07 – Sarah Stuteville and Alex Stonehill, Executive Editors of the The Common Language Project, will be launching the 2008 Eastern Africa Initiative to explore the issues of water scarcity, climate change and resource inequality in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. The Common Language Project is devoted to quality, positive international reporting that doesn’t usually make it into the mainstream media.

Stuteville and Stonehill previously spent seven months reporting in South Asia, the Middle East and Central Asia. Says Stuteville, “The entire point … has been to travel to the places that inspire fear in American audiences.” Even though she found herself “tiptoeing through Cambodian minefields and poking around crime-riddled red-light districts in Calcutta,” she was most struck by, "how the places we visited weren't simply the dangerous cliches we'd expected and the people we encountered were largely friendly, interested and eager to tell their stories."

Stuteville is not immune to fear, however. She admits that when she when she visited a remote Pashtun area, wearing a full burka, in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, “I have never been so scared in all my life.” Visiting eight months after the devastating earthquake in Oct. 2005, she and her fellow travelers were the first Americans the villagers had ever met—in a region well-known for its strong anti-Western sentiment.

Yet instead of hostility, Stuteville and her companions encountered gratitude and thanks “for coming to see us to talk of our tragedy.” And not only that, thanks “for coming in burka. We would never have thought that Americans would respect us in this way. These Americans may visit us anytime.”

Stonehill similarly found his expectations challenged during his months abroad. “Stereotypical images of Islam tend to portray a monolithic, homogenous religion of fundamentalist believers conforming to strict, unified codes of conduct,” he says. But, he continues, “I found myself struck by the diversity of believers in Islam, the nuances of their interpretations of the faith and the varying intensity of religion’s role in their lives.”

A photo essay highlighting these nuances was featured in Glimpse Quarterly, an international news, travel and feature magazine (“Panorama,” p. 24, Vol. 5 No. 4). Stuteville’s Pakistan story (“The Power of Propaganda: Dissolving Prejudice in Pakistan”) is featured on GlimpseAbroad.org, Glimpse Quarterly’s sister website, which features first person, cultural-experience pieces written by global explorers living and traveling abroad.

Coverage of the Common Language Project’s upcoming trip to Eastern Africa will also be featured on GlimpseAbroad.org.

www.CommonLanugageProject.net
www.GlimpseAbroad.org

For more information, please contact:
Kerala Goodkin, Editor in Chief
editor@glimpsefoundation.org
Tel: (800) 549-4802 | Fax: (401) 632-0979