Alexia Foundation Grant Deadline is Coming Up on Feb. 1

I have a long history with the Alexia Foundation for World Peace and Cultural Understanding, so let me say that up front.

But I also think it’s an excellent organization and one that I have and will continue to support. The foundation, created by the parents of Alexia Tsairis after she was killed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, gives grants to students (and professionals) to help them complete projects in line with their goals of world peace and cultural understanding. The professional grant is for $15,000 and the student award funds a semester in London with Syracuse University’s photojournalism program.

The Alexia Foundation offers helps to provide the financial ability for students to improve their knowledge and skills of photojournalism and to increase their own knowledge and understanding of other cultures by providing scholarships to study photojournalism at Syracuse University in London, England.

The Foundation also provides cash grants to enable student photographers to have the financial ability to produce a picture story that furthers the Foundation’s goals of promoting world peace and cultural understanding.

The judging is unique in that the grant proposals are looked at first and then the portfolios are used to determine if the best grant proposals can be done by the entrants.

The application deadline is coming up in just over a week (Feb. 1), so get your proposals in order. Students who were in my Advanced Photojournalism class last fall should have everything ready to go – you wrote the proposal, have a portfolio, why not enter? (You are not required to enter, mind you, but … well … why wouldn’t you at this point?)