Online Resource: Reuters Alert Net

By Kate | Permalink |

No Comments | May 26th, 2007 | Trackback

Alert Net is the portion of Reuters dedicated to humanitarian issues. There are daily news articles from countries and situations around the world and if there is a particular country or issue you are interested in you can subscribe to updates.

The additional features though are what make this site something above and beyond others. First of all, if you’re interested in the humanitarian aid field – either for finding and independently organizing a volunteer opportunity on your own, educating yourself on the field to one day work in it, or just finding out which organizations work in which countries – you can search to see who works where.

You also have access to statistics by country, such as the literacy rate, the corruption index, number of internet users per 1000 people, and life expectancy. And with the world press tracker, you can check out which humanitarian crises have received the most – and least – media attention. The top 10 are listed, and you can select other possibilities to compare.

Finally, you can follow blogs of several professionals from the field as they give their take on various humanitarian news topics. There is, for example, a freelance journalist reporting from Darfur, and the Global Community Editor for Reuters who wonders “what makes media reporting of humanitarian crises so inconsistent and whether bloggers can fill the gap.” The Chief Executive of Save the Children is a guest blogger – she also spent two years in Uganda as a VSO volunteer.

Whatever your interest in this field, Alert Net is bound to have something that appeals to you - check it out.