Oana Sandu

Oana Sandu is a freelance Romanian journalist with more than 15 years of experience in radio and narrative journalism. For the past 10 years, her reporting has focused primarily on social issues such as extreme poverty, discrimination against children with disabilities, and the birthing system, but mostly domestic violence. Her storytelling work has changed the level of society’s perception of domestic violence and has triggered legislative changes. In 2022, she was a fellow of Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma Fellowship and wrote about the impact of domestic violence on early childhood.

Irene Caselli

Irene Caselli is a multimedia reporter and writer, with two decades of experience in radio, TV, and print, now focusing on early childhood, reproductive rights, and carers. For a decade, Caselli was a foreign correspondent in Latin America, reporting for the BBC, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Times, and others. In 2019, she started covering early childhood for The Correspondent. In January 2021, she launched her own newsletter, The First 1,000 Days, where she continues covering early childhood, partly influenced by her experience as the mother of Lorenzo and León. She is also a senior advisor for The Early Childhood Reporting Initiative at Columbia University’s Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

Joseph Warungu

Joseph Warungu is a Kenyan media consultant and trainer with over 30 years experience in journalism. He was head of the BBC African News and Current Affairs Department and a former Knight International Journalism Fellow. Warungu is the founder of Top Story, a national mentorship programme for young journalists in Kenya, which takes the form of a popular reality TV show. Top Story is the flagship programme of AfricaonAir, a Nairobi-based organization that works with media, investors, managers, and training institutions for the re-tooling and re-imagining a new vibrant media sector capable of advancing peaceful, wealthy, and just societies in Africa and beyond.

Sune Gudmundsson

Sune Gudmundsson, based in Copenhagen, Denmark, is the CEO and co-founder of Koncentrat (launched 2018), a learning-oriented media outlet for the oldest pupils in Danish elementary schools. In 2020/21, he was a fellow at Constructive Institute in Aarhus, focusing on how to strengthen young people’s news literacy.

Gabriella Jozwiak

Gabriella Jozwiak has worked as a journalist for 13 years, writing mainly about children and young people. She covers child policy and education for UK titles and writes about issues affecting children of all ages around the globe for national and international outlets. In 2022, Gabriella received an early childhood global reporting fellowship from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma to report on how the war is impacting young children’s mental health in Ukraine. In 2015, she received the Amnesty International Best New Journalist Media Award for covering human rights during the 2014–16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Gabriella is of Polish and British descent and lives in London, England, with her husband and three young children.

Iskra Djanabetska

Iskra Djanabetska is one of the founders and the executive director of the Bulgarian children’s news media outlet Vijte.bg, as well as the online educational platform for reading promotion Knigovishte.bg. Both products are in close interrelation, so as to reach more children. Vijte.bg targets the youngest among readers — kids from 7 to 14 years old. Iskra is in charge of managing and promoting Vijte.bg as an educational tool both at schools and in the broader public space.

Katerina Vasileva

Katerina Vasileva started her journalistic career in 2019, when she joined the team of the online platform for student reporting sCOOL Media. Currently, she is a fellow of a journalistic program which allows her to intern with leading Bulgarian publications. Her stories have appeared in the weekly Capital, the daily Sega, and online platform Uspelite.bg. She is a student majoring in political science at Sofia University.

Camille Deckers

Camille Deckers is a Belgian journalist and content creator specializing in youth, news, and media. With expertise in digital storytelling, she produces captivating content tailored for young audiences. She has worked for several years at the Belgian public broadcaster VRT, where she helped to set up the Instagram account nws.nws.nws, tailored to teens aged 13-18, who are often forgotten by the media. She is currently a community manager at DPG Media and editor for Are We Europe and ENTR.

Polina Petkova

Polina Petkova is a young podcast host based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Her podcast Inside Out is centered around the theme of mental health, especially among young people, tackling a range of topics — from breathing techniques to eating disorders and tools for overcoming anxiety. In every episode, there is a guest psychologist who shares their expertise on a given topic.

Daniel Rzasa

Daniel Rzasa leads Google News Lab in Central & Eastern Europe, which is a part of a global team at Google that helps journalists fight misinformation, grow diversity in the media industry, and thrive in the digital age. He assumed the role in August 2022, after over a dozen years of working in a range of editorial roles in newsrooms across Europe.

Karin Wesselink

Dutch journalist Karin Wesselink has put children in the center of her reporting for more than twenty years. He has interviewed children (9-13 years) from all over the world, including countries such as Indonesia, Suriname, Egypt, Bangladesh, Uganda, and of course the Netherlands. Her stories and videos are being published in Samsam, an educational magazine about identity, culture and sustainability, and in Kidsweek, a weekly newspaper for children. The target audience of both publications is primary school students.