Journalism as Problem Solving

How it start­ed

The web­site Imenamag.by was launched on April 11, the anniver­sary of the bomb­ing in Min­sk sub­way.

We want­ed to do pub­lic jour­nal­ism, to turn off the vast wave of use­less dai­ly news, and to do some­thing effec­tive in solv­ing people’s prob­lems.

We start­ed with­out mon­ey, and many peo­ple did not believe that the mod­el would work and Belaru­sians would donate on a large scale to the projects. But we tried, and we made it. Our authors high­light­ed a dozen social issues and we raised over 58 thou­sand BYN and involved sev­er­al dozen vol­un­teers. Besides, we’ve fin­ished gath­er­ing funds for the sup­port of the mag­a­zine itself – peo­ple donat­ed over 21 thou­sand dol­lars.

Ime­na not only cov­ers social prob­lems, but also offers to peo­ple to act in solv­ing them. When read­ing an arti­cle, you see Share but­ton and Help but­ton.

We for­mu­lat­ed the mis­sion of the mag­a­zine: not only to cov­er prob­lems, but to give read­ers a pos­si­bil­i­ty to join in solv­ing them. It is impor­tant for us to let peo­ple know what hap­pens next to our heroes and where the dona­tions go.

Sto­ries

The first and most suc­cess­ful project was the sto­ry about orphans in Hrod­na hos­pi­tal. The prob­lem was that the kids in infec­tious dis­ease wards stayed all by them­selves all the day in closed box­es. They were only checked by med­ical per­son­nel sev­er­al times a day. It was clear that they need­ed nan­nies to take care of them, but there was not such ser­vice in hos­pi­tal. We set the goal to raise mon­ey for sup­port of two nan­nies for a year. And we raised the sum with­in a week. More­over, the next week we col­lect­ed mon­ey to pay for five more nan­nies. Now they work in Hrod­na hos­pi­tals and in four more cities.

The sec­ond sto­ry was access to edu­ca­tion for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ty who can­not go out­side. Three heroes of our sto­ries got bedrid­den after acci­dents at a young age. They did not have even nor­mal con­tact with the world, let alone get­ting edu­ca­tion. We found a project that would help peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties to learn at a dis­tance. With­in a week, our read­ers gath­ered mon­ey to launch the online school, and now it is about to start.

The third sto­ry hap­pened in asy­lum for peo­ple with seri­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­eases. There were 37 peo­ple in grave con­di­tion, and only two per­sons of med­ical per­son­nel. The asy­lum need­ed more per­son­nel and also to improve dwelling con­di­tions. The need­ed mon­ey was col­lect­ed, peo­ple were hired, the wards were cleaned and ren­o­vat­ed.

How to man­age the emo­tion­al ten­sion when work­ing with social top­ics?

Hon­est­ly, even many men cry when read our arti­cles. I am saved by the very know­ing that our top­ics do have solu­tions. After I left TUT.BY, I phoned to heroes of my ear­li­er arti­cles, and I real­ized that the arti­cles helped many of them. Such sto­ries give me strength. Our glob­al aim is to make such prob­lem solv­ing sys­tem­at­ic.

How the mag­a­zine devel­ops

Sev­er­al months after launch, we asked our read­ers to donate to the web­site Ime­na. We planned to col­lect means to work for half a year with two staff jour­nal­ists, the edi­tor and roy­al­ties. We gath­ered the sum with­in four months. All the mon­ey was donat­ed by pri­vate per­sons, in all by around 500 peo­ple.

Now the mag­a­zine intends to keep on with dozens of more sto­ries.