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HIV/AIDS

Dominican Republic: The Reporting Team

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic - We did a lot of legwork for this reporting trip the last time we were in the Dominican Republic. We spent days following leads, meeting one person after another in an effort to find those who were actually being affected by this new constitution. By the time we left, we felt that we were only one or two steps removed from getting the story, rather than five or six. We also nailed down our two most important contacts for this trip: our driver, Carlos, and our translator, John.

Dominican Republic: Intro to Our Reporting

Steve and I are back in the Dominican Republic for part two of our reporting here.  On this trip we want to delve into the tumultuous relationship between the Dominican Republic and Haiti – the two nations that share the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola.

HIV-AIDS in the US

Gaurav Noronha from School Without Walls in Washington, DC reports on the HIV-AIDS crisis in the US.

Dominican Republic: Earthquake Reverberations

Signs of the earthquake in Haiti are everywhere in neighboring Dominican Republic. Hospitals are overflowing with the injured, aid workers fill the hotels, and signs asking people to send a text message and donate to the Haiti relief effort plaster the main thoroughfare through Santo Domingo.

Dominican Republic: A Glimpse of the Batayes

Some of the most impoverished parts of the Dominican Republic are batayes - shantytowns that once housed sugar industry workers. For years, Haitian labor fueled the Dominican's large sugar industry. When the sector collapsed, many of these people had nowhere else to go – some had been in the country for decades and no longer had homes in Haiti; others were born in the Dominican Republic. Unemployment in the bateyes today is sky high; the HIV rate is also far higher than the national average.

Dominican Republic: The Border

Mondays and Fridays are market days in Dajabon, the small frontier town in the northwest of the Dominican Republic on the border with Haiti.

Dominican Republic: HIV in other vulnerable communities

HIV is one of the big problems facing Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. To start to get a better sense of this epidemic in the country overall we stopped by a gathering of groups that work with marginalized Dominicans, whose members were meeting with UNAIDS and government officials to talk about HIV and human rights.

Dominican Republic: Haitians living on the margins

This is the first post of Living on the Margins: Haitians in the Dominican Republic. There are two of us reporting – I'm Stephanie Hanes, a print reporter; looking over my shoulder at the screen is Steve Sapienza, a video journalist. We've collaborated before with the Pulitzer Center.

"House Call in Hell" to be featured at Silverdocs

"House Call in Hell," a video examining overcrowding, poor sanitation and disease in Haiti's National Penitentiary, has been selected as one of the five short documentaries from the online Current Rocks SilverDocs contest to be screened at the 2008 SilverDocs Film Festival, hosted by the American Film Institute and the Discovery Channel.

The annual documentary festival honors excellence in international filmmaking and will be held at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland, from June 16-23.

Hope: The Performance

In 2007 Ghanaian-Jamaican writer Kwame Dawes embarked on a research trip to Jamaica to explore the experience of people living with HIV/AIDS and to examine the ways in which the disease was shaping their lives.

Dawes responded to this experience through poems that capture the rich humanity of those he met and the complex emotions that come from contending so intimately with issues of mortality, stigma and grace. Dawes and his long-time collaborator, composer Kevin Simmonds, set the poems to music that showcases the spirit of Dawes's work.

"Positive Outlook" airs on DePauw University's The World is Talking, 4/14/08

"Positive Outlook," a Pulitzer Center-commissioned video that follows one HIV+ campaign speaker as she tries to stamp out the stigma of the disease, aired on DePauw University's The World is Talking television program. The program aired on April 14, 2008.

View the video and the rest of the program on The World is Talking blog.

Another Pulitzer Center-commissioned video, "Talking HIV in Jamaica," will air on the next The World is Talking program.

One World features Pulitzer Center's "Hope" project

OneWorld.net's April 1 Today's News section features the Pulitzer Center "Hope: Living and Loving with HIV/AIDS in Jamaica" project. For this project, poet and writer Kwame Dawes traveled to Jamaica to tell the stories of those living with the disease or caring for others. The result is a collection of essays, poems, video, music and photographs that capture a range of emotions and speak to resilience, hope and possibility often in the face of despair.

Antigone Barton presents on HIV/AIDS at Indiana University, March 29-30

"Heroes of HIV: HIV in the Caribbean" reporter Antigone Barton will participate in the "Mobilizing and Engaging Communities for Global Health" Conference at Indiana University during March 29-30.

The conference, which is hosted by Americans for Informed Democracy, seeks to raise awareness amongst the younger population about international health issues such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as well as inspire students to strive for policy solutions.