A Well-Written Project, a Bad Story
Sometimes I feel that donors reward the skill of writing applications more than the actual importance of the topics. It’s most visible when it comes to environmental stories.
Whenever we apply for a project about lithium mining, water pollution, or the destruction of rivers by small hydropower plants, we regularly get rejected. The explanation usually says the topic is “too broad,” “not innovative enough,” or “outside the priorities of the call.”
Yet these are issues that directly affect thousands of people — their water, their land, their health. These are the stories that should be at the center of every serious media program.
Then I look at the list of approved projects: pieces about “influencers’ eco habits” or “urban gardening in a coworking space.” Nice, cute — but far from the essence.
I don’t blame those people. On the contrary, they know how to write projects. They know exactly which words donors like: empowerment, innovation, storytelling, community impact.
But knowing how to write a project is not the same as knowing how to recognize a real story.
Donors often don’t see the reality on the ground. They read applications from offices in Brussels, Berlin, or Vienna — and it’s hard for them to grasp what it means when a river disappears or when a village loses its drinking water.
So today, when I write project proposals, I always face the same dilemma:
Should I write what the donor wants to hear, or what the public needs to know?
And that, it seems to me, is the heart of our problem — as long as rules dictate form, the most important stories will remain untold.
