Twelve international bloggers have been selected to report on pressing issues of reproductive health and population in Kenya this month.
In an exciting new global initiative, the International Reporting Project (IRP) is taking a group of 12 influential bloggers from around the world to Kenya on June 17-26 for an in-depth examination of reproductive health and population issues in that East African country.
Watch the IRP website for regular updates from the bloggers, and follow them on Twitter as they recount their impressions and observations of Kenya.
This is the first time in its 15-year history that the IRP is taking a group of new media journalists from different countries around the world to focus on a specific global issue. The 12 bloggers come from eight countries and represent a unique diverse set of specialties – including religion, ethics, culture, economics and gender issues in the developed world.
In an intensive schedule that will take them to three different regions of Kenya, the bloggers will talk to Kenyan parents and children, health officials, rural and urban citizens and experts on gender, religion and ethics. Kenya’s population is expected to double by 2040 and the country faces major health challenges, urban migration and environmental pressures caused by this rapidly growing population.
The participants on the trip, the countries they come from and the new media platforms for which they write:
• Irin Carmon is a New York-based staff writer at Salon.com and a monthly columnist at Tablet.
• Isaac Esipisu, based in South Africa, is an editor for Thomson Reuters Online, where he maintains the Africa website.
• Lola Huete Machado, a journalist at Spain’s weekly newsmagazine El País Semanal, created its Africa Is Not a Country blog in 2011.
• Julia Manning blogs for the UK’s Daily Mail, and in 2006 she established 2020health.org.
• Chido Onumah is a Nigerian journalist and the coordinator of the African Centre for Media & Information Literacy (AFRICMIL) in Abuja.
• Juliana Resende is the co-founder and executive editor of BR Press, a news agency based in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
• Martin Robbins is a UK-based researcher and science writer for The Guardian (where he 
writes at The Lay Scientist blog), Strange Quarks and others.
• Charlott Schönwetter, a feminist blogger, researcher and activist from Berlin, Germany, writes for Afrika Wissen Schaft, Mädchenmannschaft, My Feminist Way and the new group blog femgeeks.de.
• Lynn C. Schreiber is a UK-based writer and blogger who recently launched Jump! magazine.
• Jeff Sharlet is a U.S.-based author, contributing editor for Rolling Stone and Harper’s Magazine and co-creator of KillingTheBuddha.com and TheRevealer.org.
• Sanchita Sharma, based in New Delhi, is the health editor and HealthWise columnist of the Hindustan Times.
• Mark Thoma, a U.S. economics professor, blogs daily at Economist’s View, writes a bi-weekly column at the Fiscal Times and contributes to online publications such as The Economist Guest Network and the New York Times Room for Debate.