Project 101: A Crash Course in Poverty

So far, I have recommended a couple of articles from The Correspondent, the Dutch member-funded journalism platform offering to be "your antidote to the daily news grind." One of their new experiments that caught my attention recently is Project 101, where they try to invent a new story form. They create ‘crash courses’ on big topics, aiming to collect relevant articles on the topic and present the basics in a concise Q&A format so you can jump straight to what interests you most.

This one is about poverty. Starting from the angle that world leaders have set themselves a target to make the world free of extreme poverty by 2013, they ask a simple question: how?

In this dedicated web area, four correspondents use both words and graphics to explore the extent of the problem, the causes and possible solutions. What I particularly like is that they move beyond the traditional questions about GDP and the ‘dollar per day’ to attempt to answer deeper ones. Like: what does it feel like to be poor? And: is poverty your own fault? Or the government’s? Or the fault of the West?

They do also try to properly explain issues that most of us would perceive as complicated, for example: how do you measure poverty most effectively? Or: does eradicating poverty happen through development aid, international agreements or trade? And which is best?

As the reporters state themselves: there is no one simple answer. But Project 101 is a worthwhile attempt to let us engage with some of the pressing, complex, global issues of our time in a more comprehensive way. They just launched a brand new 101 on security in the EU in collaboration with other European investigative journalists, which looks promising too.