THE MISSION
The Out of Eden Walk is not one person’s journey. It is a unifying voyage that belongs to humanity.
Our goal is to foster a global storytelling initiative for cross-cultural engagement that links academic institutions, media professionals, and grassroots communities interested in promoting people-to-people connectivity via the ethos of “slow journalism.”
In an age of information overload, when an accelerating news cycle can stoke confusion, polarization and mistrust, the Out of Eden Walk Coalition harnesses the power of humane, in-depth, fact-based reporting to illuminate, across media, the complex challenges facing the world at the turn of the new millennium: from a rising tide of xenophobia to resource depletion, from climate change to cultural endurance, from war to human mass migration, from technological innovation to environmental conservation, and more.
Our partner institutions and practitioners look to the historic storytelling journey of Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Paul Salopek, who has embarked on a multi-year, 24,000-mile walk across the globe along the pathways of our ancestral journey out of Africa, as a model and inspiration.
Our aim: Grow a new generation of storytellers who, by slowing down their methodology, and taking the time to ‘walk’ through the day’s headlines, begin to record and share more meaningful stories that reveal the hidden connections among our lives. We foster boot-level journalism that catalyzes responsible change and accountable behavior in a globalized world.
Join the journey: half the world still lies before us.
Our slow journalism academic framework is available upon request.
Our 501(c)(3) EIN is 46-1228334. IRS certification letter available upon request.
BENEFITS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
The Out of Eden Walk Coalition is a caravan of like-minded institutions and individuals who bring credibility and global reach to an alliance that entwines the fields of journalism, education, digital mapping, and philanthropy.
The Coalition organizations share knowledge, showcase worthy projects, offer mentorship opportunities, and have access to a network of international expertise to develop and promote the philosophy of slow journalism. Current partners include:
Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Project Zero, a research center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education
Veditum (India)
Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard
Robert R. McCormick Foundation
New York University-Shanghai Institute for Contemporary Arts
Esri, GIS mapping software company
Over the past 11 years, with our partners, we have:
- Published Out of Eden editorial content for an audience of at least 45 million readers worldwide.
- Organized “slow storytelling” workshops that generated multimedia reportage for national outlets that reached an audience of 25 million people in India.
- Created an innovative cross-cultural platform that has enrolled 35,000 primary and secondary level students in 62 countries.
- Provided training to more than 1,100 university-level professors across disciplines (not just journalism, but anthropology, geography, and history) in the United States.
- Prototyped a pioneering civic walk program that inspires thousands to create storytelling maps of their own journeys.
JOIN US
Originating in 2013 as a seven-year storytelling walk by journalist Paul Salopek, the project has now matured into a global movement with no sunset date.
Out of Eden Walk Coalition partners have tested methods of meaning-centric storytelling and educational programming that bridge cultural differences, realign common interests and commitments across borders for key global sustainability initiatives (for example, gender equality), and have introduced hundreds of thousands of words of thoughtful, immersive journalism into mainstream text-based media.
Out of Eden Walk supports Veditum India Foundation in bringing Walk-inspired fellowship opportunities to media creatives and eco-storytellers in India.
Building on these successes, the Coalition plans to significantly scale up operations as Out of Eden Walk approaches new horizons in South Korea and Japan in 2024.
In 2022, we introduced a Phase Two strategic value proposition to our stakeholders, building out from the past years of Paul Salopek’s journey. This expansion coincided with new opportunities presented by the Coalition’s entry into China, the center of the world’s most populous netizen community, and home to the most widely spoken language on the globe.
Coalition targets:
- Collecting our data into a framework for systematizing the spread of “slow storytelling” across academic disciplines. This academic study will be published in a professional, peer-reviewed journal, and serve as a blueprint for the easy adoption of our methodologies by any interested global educational institutions (journalism and film schools) and media agencies.
- Formalizing a reorganization of the Coalition’s guiding executive structure for joint strategic planning by key participating stakeholders. We will create a global interdisciplinary advisory board to provide technical assistance and capacity building.
- Launch a concerted development campaign to fund the build-out of a storytelling revolution that, in essence, empowers every global citizen to walk their own stories—and share them as a public good.
We welcome new partners on this pioneering trail.
Email us: info@outofedenwalk.com.
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Address: Out of Eden Walk Nonprofit, PO Box 148, Santa Fe, NM, 87504, USA.
