Jonathan Y Bundu

Jonathan Y Bundu has been a Development Communicator for the past 16 years. He holds a Diploma and Certificate in Cultural Studies and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He majored in English and minored in Mass Communications and Politics, and he is currently enrolled for his M.Phil in Mass Communications. Jonathan’s career in photojournalism dates back to the 2000. In his work with Save the Children, Concern World Wide and World Vision, photography has been a critical tool to capture donor interventions in rural communities and bring out the transformation in the lives of those people. Apart from photojournalism, Jonathan Bundu is a film and documentary maker, focusing on the rights of women and children. Jonathan also writes for Radio, Stage and TV, and worked with Search for Common Ground-Talking Drum Studios in the popular radio soap Opera ATUNDA AYENDA (meaning LOST and FOUND in Mandingo).

Morgana Wingard

Morgana Wingard is an American photojournalist and documentary filmmaker based in Africa specializing in social reportage and international development. She has traveled to over two dozen countries filming projects for an array of clients including USAID, UNICEF, ONE, MSF and CARE. Before founding Namuh in 2013, she worked for international development organizations in India and Washington, DC, the global marketing company McCann Worldgroup, and Annie Leibovitz’s studio in New York City

Fatou Wurie

Fatou Wurie is a social activist, public speaker and the founder of The Survivor Dream Project, a non-profit organization that offers holistic support to women and youth survivors of trauma. Fatou has worked for UNMEER, UNICEF, Options UK and other bi-lateral organizations as advocacy and communications advisor. Her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Forbes, MamaYe Campaign, UNICEF Innovations Blog, Amnesty International Digital Blog, The Journalist, and The Africa Report’s ‘Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary People’ Section. Fatou speaks on platforms like The Moth, UNICEF Innovation Summit, Red Cross Humanitarian Conference, and the Oxford-Africa Conference and is an active participant at the diaspora workshop for humanitarian action and mobilization across Europe. She holds a BA from the University of British Columbia and will be a graduate student at The University of Oxford in the 2016 fall.

Sean Jacobs

Sean Jacobs, a native of Cape Town, South Africa, holds a Ph.D. in Politics from the University of London and a M.A. in Political Science from Northwestern University. He is Associate Professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York, NY, and is currently writing a book on the intersection of mass media, globalization and liberal democracy in post-apartheid South Africa. He is co-editor of Thabo Mbeki’s World: The Politics and Ideology of the South African President (Zed Books, 2002) and Shifting Selves: Post-Apartheid Essays on Mass Media, Culture and Identity (Kwela Books, 2004). His most recent scholarly articles have appeared in Politique Africaine (2006) and Media, Culture, and Society (2007); and has contributed reviews and opeds to The Guardian, The New York Times, Volkskrant, The National and The Nation. Previously, he taught African Studies as well as communication studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He also worked as a political researcher for the Institute for Democracy in South Africa. Jacobs founded Africa is a Country, a blog featuring online commentary, original writing, media criticism, videos, audio, and photography.

The Open Society Foundations

The Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, are the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights. George Soros opened his first international foundation in Hungary in 1984.

Today, the Open Society Foundations support a vast array of projects in more than 120 countries, providing thousands of grants every year through a network of national and regional foundations and offices.

The Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA)

The Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) is part of the Open Society Foundations’ global network and is one of its four foundations in Africa. OSIWA is dedicated to the promotion of inclusive democratic governance, transparent and accountable institutions, and active citizenship across the region. OSIWA envisions a West Africa where people enjoy basic freedoms and participate meaningfully in civic and political life, where inequalities and inequities are minimized, exclusion gives way to greater appreciation for pluralism, governments are accountable and corruption is on the wane.