Raya Al Jadir, a freelance journalist and co-founder of the Disability Horizons Arabic e-magazine, and Deena Kamel, a business reporter at The National, have been awarded Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism.
The pair will join the UAE programme of the year-long, non-residential fellowship in September, which aims to increase and improve the quality of mental health reporting in the media.
During their time as fellows, both journalists will be assisted by a local advisory board in the UAE and receive intensive training from experts and mentors in the US to help them accurately report on mental health.
The Carter Centre, a US-based not-for-profit, non-governmental organisation, has awarded annual fellowships to more than 200 journalists around the world since 1996. The fellowship is named after Rosalynn Carter, co-founder of the Carter Centre, who has been an influential voice in the field of mental health for decades. The National administers and oversees the UAE programme.
Al Jadir has contributed to BBC Arabic, The Independent newspaper in the UK, as well as The National and Huff Post. She is also currently working freelance with Nasher News in Dubai.
Over the next year, she will seek to report on how pandemic stay-at-home orders have affected the mental health of people in the region who live with disabilities.
Kamel is a reporter at The National with a focus on aviation and transport. Her reporting has taken her on assignment to Sydney, Seoul, Seattle, Geneva and across the region. Previously she was the Gulf transport correspondent for Bloomberg in Dubai.
During her fellowship, Kamel will explore the upheaval experienced by the aviation sector during the coronavirus crisis and its impact on the mental health of those working in the industry.
Applications for the 2021-22 UAE cohort of Rosalynn Carter Fellows for Mental Health Journalism will open in February 2021.