African Union Office of the Youth Envoy Call for submissions: “Sauti صوتي” Africa Young Feminist Blog (Paid)

Deadline: May 31, 2020

Calling young women across the continent and the diaspora! Submit your creative work for the Sauti Africa Young Feminist Blog.

The African Union Office of the Youth Envoy launched on International Women’s Day “Africa Young Feminist blog “Sauti صوتي”. Now it will be re-launched in collaboration with the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) to publish “Sauti صوتي” Publication of 25 young women contributions celebrating Beijing+25 featuring untold and underrepresented stories of young women from across Africa and the diaspora showcasing their innovation and impact in the community.

Young women across the continent and the diaspora are invited to express through writing, visual or audio/video or any other creative means and artistic expressions, to showcase the impact of women-led actions to address COVID19 and other interlinked issues as well as showcase the daily struggles and challenges young women are facing in the evolving COVID-19 pandemic situation.

About the Blog

Sauti is the Africa Young Feminist Blog launched by the African Union Office of the Youth Envoy (OYE) in collaboration with the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) to publish the SAUTI Publication of 25 young women contributions. SAUTI blog aims at amplifying the voices of African young women featuring untold and underrepresented stories from across Africa and the diaspora. SAUTI blog wants to draw attention to their struggles, advocacy and achievements, with special focus on the COVID-19 pandemic.

SAUTI blog will be an online blog featuring the submitted works from June 1st to June 18th. Following this, the SAUTI Publication of 25 young women contributions will be published on June 19th on the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict.

Themes

• Youth Silencing the Guns (AU 2020 Theme of the Year)
• Youth Refugee Voices
• Ending Violence Against Young Women
• Employment and Education Match
• Youth Health and Wellbeing
• Young Peacebuilders

They are accepting original works under the following categories;

• Writing; articles (prose) or poetry.
• Visuals; painting, photography, caricature, etc.
• Audio/video; podcasts, news article, short documentary, etc.

Benefits

• 25 contributions from the blog will be selected and published into a compendium that will be available in both digital and printed versions.
• Selected submissions will receive a remuneration of 200 USD each for their creative work in an effort to support young women financially in these difficult circumstances of coronavirus outbreak.
• The payment will be made per submission, even for collaborative works.

Eligibility

If you are an African woman aged 20 to 35, living on the continent and in the diaspora and who has creative work related to blog themes, they welcome your submission.

Only works that respect the following will be accepted:

1. Collaborative works are permitted, however payment will be made per submission;
2. All submissions should answer one of the listed themes;
3. The selection will be on a rolling basis;
4. All submissions must be original works;
5. Plagiarised content will be rejected;
6. Work that has been previously published or distributed will be rejected.

Writing (Word doc.) 

• The length should be 800 to 1000 words for English and Arabic, and 800 to 1200 for French for articles (prose) and max. 3 pages for poetry;
• The submissions must be professionally written and comprehensible with a quality content and proper formatting; paragraphs, titles, sub-titles, bullet points, etc;
• Make sure that your submission is clearly indexed and referenced.

Visual: Painting, Photography, Caricature etc (JPG, PNG, PDF)

• All photos submitted must have a minimum resolution of 1024×1024 pixels;
• Photos can be taken in color, black and white and the use of filters is authorized.

Audio/video:podcasts,news article, short documentary, etc.

• Recommended specifications for audio:  Mp3, 320Kbps | Minimum:  Mp3, 320Kbps;
• Recommended specifications for Video:  Mp4, 1080px Full HD |  Minimum: Mp4: 480p SD;
• The video/audio must be 2-4 minutes long;
• The image and voice must be clear and easy to understand;
• Video should be shot in landscape;
• Video should have the name & country subtitled – bottom right, throughout.

Application

• 22 May – Call for submissions
• 31 May – Deadline for submissions
• 01 – 18 June – Blog posting
• 19 June – Digital Sauti Publication & Webinar ( International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict )

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For more information, visit AU Youth Envoy.