Posted on 18 July 2011
Scholarship winner Jason Edwards
The second winner of this year’s University of Wales Gareth Jones Memorial Travelling Scholarship has been awarded £3000 for his investigative reporting on food poverty in America.
Jason Edwards, a Masters graduate of International Journalism, will use the money from the award towards funding a documentary project on food poverty, undertaken as part of his studies.
His project required him to travel to the Southern states of the US where he carried out a series of interviews and associated filming.
Speaking of his project, Jason said:
“Each year over 50 million Americans go hungry in the richest country in the world. With a limited state welfare system, many low-paid and hardworking families are forced to rely on the local food bank and Christian missionaries in order to survive.”
“The scholarship enables me to highlight this growing and devastating problem that is often overlooked in the international media. The award funds a TV documentary set in San Antonio, one of the most impoverished cities in the Deep South, and tells the story of the 4 million Texans who are living (literally) on the bread line.”
He cites that one of the main reasons for his entry into journalism as being the need to investigate the people behind the headlines and to “reach out into the local communities, wherever they are in the world”.
He added:
“I am thrilled to receive the Gareth Jones Memorial Travelling Scholarship and thank the University for choosing my application”
Having graduated from the then University of Wales Aberystwyth in 2009 with an honours degree in European Politics, Jason went on to obtain an MA in International Journalism at University College Falmouth in Cornwall.
This Scholarship is provided from the income of a Memorial Fund raised by public subscription to perpetuate the memory of Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones, a graduate of the University, who met his death at the hand of bandits in Inner Mongolia, 12 August, 1935.
/Ends
Notes to Editors:
For more information about the University of Wales Scholarships, click on:
http://www.wales.ac.uk/en/Scholarships/Scholarships.aspx For more information on The University of Wales please visit:
www.wales.ac.uk