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Ottawa, October 31, 2006 – Ensuring that research benefits the most people is a priority of Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC). IDRC today announced that it has awarded its first science journalism awards to French language journalists. The recipients are Mélanie Robitaille, an independent Québec journalist, and Catherine Yogo, journalist at Mutations, the Yaoundé, Cameroon, daily.

Science must serve humanity—but humanity must have access to science if it is to benefit. The exceedingly rapid pace of scientific and technological advances requires that journalists, in the North and South, well understand science and have specialized professional training. IDRC created these new science journalism awards to foster a vibrant culture of science journalism.

These awards aim to promote a field-based understanding of developing-country scientific realities and to facilitate exchanges between journalists in the North and in the South so that they can eventually assume active civic roles. The two recipients will each receive CA$60 000 for a work-study program of approximately six months, three of which will be spent at the Agence Science-Presse, and three will be used to carry out a personal project. The recipients will share their practical experiences during the 5th World Conference of Science Journalists, to be held in Melbourne, Australia, 17-20 April 2007.

Mélanie Robataille, who has a Master’s degree in microbiology, has been a journalist since 2002. She was the recipient of the 2004 jury prize of the Bourse Fernand-Seguin, awarded to foster careers in science journalism. Her reporting project will take her to several Latin American countries to investigate the impact on science—or lack thereof—of socialist governments.

Catherine Yogo has been a journalist at Mutations since 2001, where today she mainly covers health and environmental issues. She obtained her journalism degree from the Institut supérieur des sciences de l’information et la communication in Dakar (Senegal). She will study and report on waste management practices in several African countries.

In addition to these two awards for French-speaking journalists, IDRC will also finance two awards for English-speaking journalists this year, one of them in partnership with SciDev.Net, a Web portal that facilitates developing country access to scientific information. The recipients of the English-language awards will be announced in the coming months.

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Information:

Ottawa
Isabelle Bourgeault-Tassé
International Development Research Centre
(1+) 613-236-6163, ext. 2343
ibourgeault-tasse@idrc.ca

Montreal
Pascal Lapointe
Agence Science-Presse
(1+) 514-844-4388, ext. 222
pascal@sciencepresse.qc.ca

2006-10-31

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