Grantee name: World Pulse

Mission: World Pulse is a media enterprise covering global issues through the eyes of women.  They are dedicated to listening to and broadcasting the unheard voices and innovative solutions of women worldwide. They produce World Pulse Magazine as well as PulseWire, an interactive community newswire where women can speak for themselves to the world and connect to solve global problems. From web to print, World Pulse has created a forum where women’s voices can rise from the ground up and connect across oceans, continents, and cultural barriers to create a new world.

Location: Portland, OR, USA

Website: www.worldpulse.com

YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/user/WorldPulse

Channel Grants: Channel has made several grants to World Pulse for the purposes of supporting the Voices of our Future Correspondents Network, a program that trains women from around the globe to report from the frontlines, to influence the policies that affect their lives, and to become citizen journalists. Channel also helps support the development and implementation of Safety and Security measures for the correspondents. (2009, 2010, 2011)

The World Pulse program was conceived in 2008 to address the severe imbalance of global women’s voices in the international media as authorities, experts, and content producers. Currently, women are the most unheard in the world, with just 7% of women profiled in government and political stories, and 1% women editors globally. NGOs, governments, and even journalists frequently speak for women and define their causes. This problem is particularly acute for women leaders in impoverished, remote, and conflict-ridden areas who struggle to access technology and obtain the skills to channel their solutions to the world stage.

Using web 2.0 global women’s newswire as a tool, World Pulse provides tailored, rigorous training in new media and citizen journalism to grassroots women leaders with powerful messages who would not otherwise have the ability to reach wider audiences with their stories. In partnership with The Press Institute for Women in the Developing World, the Empowerment Institute, and The OpEd Project, correspondents learn how to write OpEds, substantive feature stories, and use cell phones for rapid reporting. Each woman is published by World Pulse and paired with a certified empowerment mentor to help her overcome the psychological barriers that may prevent her full participation and leadership.

Once the women graduate to World Pulse’s Global Correspondents Network upon completion of the program, they receive certificates and press passes to strengthen their influence locally.  As World Pulse builds its media partnerships, it will increasingly be able to offer the women journalists connections to local news bureaus and media resources.

World Pulse is constantly expanding the program to increase its reach and influence by marketing the correspondents’ stories to mainstream media desks and international forums, developing their “train the trainers” curriculum, and incorporating girl leaders.