Fall 2017 Pulitzer Project: Myths of Conservation in Africa & More - CIVITAS-STL

Fall 2017 Pulitzer Project: Myths of Conservation in Africa & More

Civitas and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting are very pleased to announce the fall Global Gateway outreach program to students and teachers in St. Louis. Stephanie Hanes will be coming to St. Louis, October 10 – 13.

In 2007, Hanes was the first journalist to come to St. Louis as part of Pulitzer’s Global Gateway program. She reported about the remarkable story of the restoration of the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique.

Since that time, there have been significant changes. In Stephanie’s 2017 book, “White Man’s Game: Saving Animals, Rebuilding Eden and Other Myths of Conservation in Africa,” she tells us of the many changes; some positive and some not so good.

Stephanie Hanes is a freelance reporter whose work has appeared in more than a dozen national publications, including Smithsonian Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, Africa Geographic, and USA Today. She was a staff reporter at The Baltimore Sun before moving to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she lived for four years.

In southern Africa, she covered topics ranging from conservation to HIV/AIDS to the new art of “car spinning” in South African townships. Reporting from Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, she worked with the Pulitzer Center on a series of stories about the environmental impact of human conflict and later won an Alicia Patterson journalism fellowship to continue her reporting in and around the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique.

Her first book, “White Man’s Game: Saving Animals, Rebuilding Eden and Other Myths of Conservation in Africa,” stems from her reporting on Gorongosa National Park. It was published in 2017.

Stephanie is not only conversant about her subject matter, she is also a remarkable advocate for thoughtful journalism. You can learn more about her, and see how articulate she is, by viewing her Ted Talk from 2015.

A schedule of her classroom visits can be found here.

To provide you and your students with some background information, we are providing a compendium of some of the key passages from Stephanie’s new book, White Man’s Game.  She raises a number of essential questions, not just about the Gorongosa National Park, not just about Mozambique, not just about Africa, but about when different cultures try to play on the same field. You can read the excerpts by clicking here.

Photos from her classroom visits are available by clicking here.

Bobbi

Bobbi Kennedy is the middle school coordinator for Civitas. She also helps with high school activities and keeps the web site from imploding.