Babel Reporter

And the second team is by now completed. Ready to go to Moldova...

• Sebastian Meyer (27) US/UK Coming from New York, Sebastian has lived in London since 2006 where he works freelance. His clients include The Sunday Telegraph, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Evening Standard, The New York Times, and Getty Images.

Sebastian's website

• Andrea Davoust (28) CAN/FR Franco-canadian, Andrea has collaborated to New York Times, AFP, The Sunday Herald and is now working for a communication agency based in London. Her many travels implies Erithrea, Albania, Island, Rwanda, Slovakia...

• Damien Dubuc (29) FR Graduated from the CFJ two years ago, Damien has lived in Berlin before settling down in Paris. Intern for Liberation and Le Monde, he works now as free lance and has realised few features about refugees in Calais retention center, jails of women in Equateur. He collaborates regularly with Geo Ados.

• Prune Antoine (26) FR French editor in charge of social issue for cafebabel.com for the past 2 years. Graduated in International Law, Prune worked for Le Figaro, l'Express and Cosmopolitan. Her features about discirmination of gay in Lithuania has been selected at the EU Journalist Award 2007.

Ukraine : refugee in unrestricted access

• Questions de femmes, France (June 2008)

• Axelle, Belgium (27/03/2008)

        Ukrainian rock'n roll litterature 

• Le Monde des Livres, France (04/04/08)
• The European Cultural Foundation (ECF)

'Womb to rent'

• ELLE, Belgium (28/04/2008)
•  FEMINA, Switzerland (18/05/2008)

And many more to come...

• UKRAINE NEW ROCK'N ROLL LITERATURE (© Babel Reporter)

A new wave of blogs, books and trendy bookshops is sweeping Ukraine, making writing the new playground of the country’s twenty-something’s. Why, how and since when writing in Ukrainian became a way of resisting the hegemony of the country’s powerful Russian neighbor and asserting a new national pride instigated by the Orange Revolution ?

Text : Prune Antoine

Photography : Cyril Horiszny

For the first edition of Babel Reporter in Ukraine, here are the topics that we will cover.

Women

In France and more generally in Europe, the use of 'surrogate mothers' is prohibited by law. But in Ukraine, the motherhood of substitution is becoming a more and more juicy business. Modern clinics and undergound structures are proposing to western couples without children to carry their baby and 'rent the bellies' of ukrainian women.

Immigration

With the signature of new visa agreements between Kiev and Brussels and the enlargment of Schengen zone in december 07, Ukraine fears of becoming the new Ceuta and a new destination of illegal migrations. While Ukrainian authorities have reinforced the monitoring of their borders, some retention camps (founded by the EU but in terrible sanitary condition) are coming up like in Mukachevo, along the polish-ukraino borders. Refugees from ex-URSS or Middle-East keep on crowding in.

Litterature

Ukraine seems now to be a country where litterary thrives. Following the examples of 'classics' ukrainian writers like Juri Andrukhovitch and its groupe of dissident poets 'Bu-ba-bu' or Andrei Kourkov, specialist of political satires and internationally recognised, a new wave of young authors like Ljubko Deresh, Irena Karpa or Serghy Zhadan -in their twenty-something- are emerging on the ukrainian cultural scene. Those baby-writers from the 'Majdan generation', the one having done the Orange Revolution, offer a critical and often trash vision of post-transition society, symbolising the renewal of national identity.

Religion

15 after the independance of the country, while most conventional churches are in decline in Central and Eastern Europe and new Evangelist Church are rising. 20% of all believers in Ukraine are supposed to belong to sects. In Kiev, Sunday Adelaja, a Nigerian pastor founder of the Embassy of God, participated to the Orange revolution and preaches now to masses of people, amongst them lots of oligarchs and youngs, seduced by its new and charismatic approach of social problem and politics : alcoholism or democracy.

The session 1 of Babel Reporter will take place in Ukraine in February 2008. Kiev, Lviv and the refugee camps in Mukachevo along the ukraino-solvakian border ...

Basically the articles we want to produce will be organised around 3 subjects: society /culture/ tourism & travel.

Topics have to be fresh, original and European, easily identifiable as 'Babelian'.

If the project works as expected, the expeditions take place every 2 to 3 months, with various transnational teams : 3 x 2 (photograph + writer) of different nationalities.

At first, destinations will be focused on Eastern Europe. Our general concept tends to focus on the youngest generations while being aware of the East-West gap and always anticipating the forthcoming news.

Flexibility and improvisation ! Those are the two key-words for a challenging journalistic experiment, called 'Babel Reporter'.

The idea ? To create a transnational collective of European reporters (writers and photographers) in order to realise a serie of 'different features' in a wide range of countries in Europe. Nothing really new under the sun? Thanks to this specific multicultural approach and the Babelian 'savoir faire' concerning the quality and the originality of the issues treated, our journalists will report about uncovered realities of European cities.