New international development database offers resources for journalists

par IJNet
30 oct 2018 dans Investigative Journalism

Journalists who cover international development topics have a new resource at their disposal.

The newly launched Agenda for International Development (A-id), an Italian think tank that focuses on international development, compiled a free online database featuring thousands of documents relating to social policy and global development, particularly for low-income nations.

“Journalists can find a huge number of documents spanning from 2010 to 2015, such as policy briefs, reports, memorandum, advocacy papers and working papers,” said Corrado Fumagalli, founder and CEO.

In addition to this database, A-id also offers freely accessible policy briefs and research relating to four areas of inquiry: gender, education, environment and public health. Fumagalli explained that A-id plans to begin this research within the next two months.

To use A-id’s database, users can either browse through its categories and subcategories or search using a keyword. An advanced search function also exists in which users can search according to geographic area, year, category and subcategory. The database mostly consists of documents in English, but French, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish documents also exist, with plans to expand to other languages like Arabic as well.

Since launching A-id last week, Fumagalli said feedback has been largely positive. Most journalists using A-id do so for its articles and video interviews, as well as its lists of job opportunities and events.

“So far, most of the feedback from journalists centered on the web magazine and the video interviews — they all were very positive,” he said.

Other similar databases for journalists include Eldis and the United Nations’ database collection.

Main image CC-licensed by Flickr via Ralf Appelt.