Union Is
Strength
A new journalism prize to reward teamwork among young Europeans.
The stories
Create social cohesion by urban renovation: Macrolotto Zero project
In Italy, a former industrial district is changing. Metropolitan market and urban jungles replace wastelands and idle factories, to improve the daily life of the inhabitants and allow them to live better together.
France’s Créatrices d'Avenir prize: giving women a taste for entrepreneurship
Each year, the competition rewards six female French business creators, with the aim of highlighting female entrepreneurship and achieving parity in an environment that has long been reserved for men.
Anor, a small town in Nord-pas-de-calais, had five factories and a dolphinarium. All have closed, and the municipality is trying to restore the old buildings left to decay. A tale of the Verrerie district, from a decrepit coron to an eco-neighbourhood.
In Slovenia, father-and-son teams are defying mass tourism
In the Slovenian Alps, tourism has long been a mainstay of the local economy. In recent years, however, local people have been offering a calmer, slower kind of holiday.
Power Plays: What can a lignite village teach us about Just Transition?
In Mavropigi (Western Macedonia), the expropriated inhabitants count on it to be compensated.
Biogas in New Aquitaine: finding the right price
Small biogas plants are flourishing in New Aquitaine, a region of southwest France. In the fields in Saint-Antoine-de-Breuilh, another one has just been inaugurated. But while methanisation obviously has a role to play in the ecological transition, its role in France’s energy mix still needs to be settled.
In Poland, a cooperative is the key to social integration
A place to live, a community, a job: for ten years, the Polish social cooperative Arte has offered help and structure to the most vulnerable.
The project
Union Is Strength is a unique journalistic project that aims to bring together young European journalists by inviting them to work together.
I - Union Is Strength in 3 steps
1. You find a story related to a project financed by the EU. Many projects are here, here, here, or those in France here. You can also ask the representation of the EU Commission in your country the existing projects around you.
2. You log in on the forum of Union Is Strength to meet your future teammate (French if you come from another EU country, or a journalist from another EU country if you are French).
3. Together you apply to the contest by following the requirements listed here, and try to win the 1500€ award.
II - The project
The journalists will work in pairs and take a cross-cultural look at various projects in France and Europe that are supported by the European Union’s cohesion policy. The articles they write will then be published in three languages: French, English and one of the twenty-four official languages of the Union.
The contest is open to all young journalists aged 30 at most who are
European Union nationals.
The contest is open to all young journalists aged 30 at most who are European Union nationals. Twenty teams of young Franco-European journalists will be selected by a jury comprising Slate.fr staff and leading personalities from French journalism.
III - The collaboration
Each team will have to propose two stories, jointly written by both members, that will focus on an initiative developed within the country of each team member. The selected teams will be paid for their work at a rate of 1500 euros per team.
The proposed topics should meet the following criteria:
- be submitted by a team of two young journalists, either at the end of their training or recently graduated, each aged 30 at most. Each team must be composed of a French journalist and a journalist from another EU country
- include two pitches: one about a project carried out in a region of France and another one about a project in a region of the other team member’s country
- present innovative projects supported by the European Union regarding a European region, and more specifically initiatives developed with the help of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Cohesion Fund (CF), the European Social Fund (ESF) and especially the Just Transition Fund and the Recovery Plan in key sectors –innovation, ecology, digital, social, citizenship– while respecting the full editorial independence of the actors involved.
The young reporters will be guided in
their investigation, reporting work.
Both articles must be a joint effort, written and signed by both journalists. The young reporters will be guided in their investigation, reporting, writing and editing work by Slate.fr’s editorial staff, as is usually the case with all the people who work with the site, and by a project manager who is herself a journalist.
To make it easier to create teams across the European Union, an English-speaking forum has been opened for applicants.
