Supported projects

BRUSSELS - Europe's Natura 2000 protected areas are groaning under nitrogen emissions from livestock farming. Meanwhile, farmers near nature reserves fear for their future. Due to conflicting policy choices, agriculture and nature conversation have become diametrically opposed. The call for a long-term vision is becoming louder and louder. What kind of agriculture do we want in Flanders?

STEKENE - It is not allowed to live in a recreation area. Yet people still live in a chalet or a caravan, or sometimes in a brick weekend residence. Sometimes these are people who find themselves in precarious financial circumstances. Pensioners, people coming out of a divorce, people who are ill, or who, in short, have a low income. They have found a housing solution that is acceptable to them and they are proud of it. They are not going to let it go.

BRUSSELS - Climate change is making European summers ever drier and hotter, and not just in the south: During the extremely dry summer of 2018, the drought was mostly limited to the part of Europe north of the Alps. In many places, the summers of 2019 and 2020 were again unusually dry.

NAIROBI - European media regularly report on human rights violations by multinational companies 'from here'. Various Flemish media reported that a Brussels construction company would engage in forced labour in Qatar in preparation for the World Cup. Swedish journalists Tobias Åkerblom and Moa Kärnstrand revealed that a Swedish clothing brand would employ children aged 14 in Myanmar. However, multinationals born and raised in emerging economies are often forgotten.

ZAGREB - Writer and historian Irene van der Linde and documentary photographer Nicole Segers travel in the footsteps of the British writer Rebecca West through former Yugoslavia and Albania. With West's magnum opus Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942) in their hands, they go in search of the meaning of the new borders in the Balkans.

AUSTIN - Louise Van Assche is a documentary filmmaker who lives and works in Austin, Texas. She was born and raised in Belgium and has Congolese roots. A year ago she moved to Austin, the capital of Texas. There she ended up in the middle of the Black Lives Matter protests. It touched her personally and she decided to take to the streets to make a report.

BRUSSELS - A pregnancy test that could lead to a miscarriage or a child with a birth defect. Abroad, the drug Duogynon is causing controversy to this day. This autumn, a British victims' organisation is suing the manufacturer, pharmaceutical giant Schering (now Bayer).

BRAKEN - The Belgian city Braken on the Dutch border, has 1.2 million chickens among its inhabitants. They divide the village: inhabitants are tired of the smell, fine dust and heavy transport in their village. In order to objectify the discussion, the local government ordered an air quality study.

SCHIEDAM - A radically different view of cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, that is what The Cholesterol Myth is all about. Part of it is that cholesterol is no longer the big bogeyman, but, according to experts, can be seen as a positive, body-specific, even healing substance. On closer inspection, cholesterol also plays a positive role in our diet. These visions underpinned in the book raise the question of what causes all those cardiovascular patients to die every day, just as the author almost lost his father.

BEIRUT - On 17 October 2019, a revolution broke out in Lebanon that is still raging among the people. The - young, secular - population is trying to break free, while the divided sectarian power apparatus is digging deeper. The ongoing Lebanese popular protests resulted in the largest national protest since the civil war (75-90). All Lebanese, regardless of their frame of reference within the melting pot of cultures, unite under one banner against the corrupt commanders