Croatian Journalist Wins Balkan Fellowship Prize

Berlin/Belgrade, November 30, 2009 - Maja Hrgovic, 29, scooped first prize in this year's Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence for her article 'Families Pay The Price As Women Go West'.

Members of the Selection Committee recognised the quality of Maja's reporting and noted particularly the excellent international research into what they agreed was a new and important phenomenon for the region and Europe as a whole.

Maja, a culture journalist for the Croatian daily Novi List, receives an award of EUR 4,000.

The award was presented at a ceremony in Berlin, hosted by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and attended by all ten journalists who participated in the 2009 program of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence.

Second-place, with a prize of EUR 3,000 was awarded to Momir Turudic, for his article 'Germany's A Dream For Serbia's Roma Returnees' and Yana Buhrer Tavanier, whose article, 'Institutions Remain Dumping Grounds For Forgotten People', came in third, won EUR 1,000.

The seminar also marked the launch of a book featuring all of the fellows' articles - the result of four months of research and travel throughout both the Balkans and the EU. This year, the writers addressed the topic of Identity from many different angles, looking at the Balkan's criminal, social, economic, cultural and religious landscape.

'Identity: The Search for Belonging in a Changing Europe' will be distributed in the coming weeks at events to be held throughout Southeast Europe, and will also be available online.

Initiated by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and Erste Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic excellence responds with financial and professional support to the growing need in the region to foster quality reporting, encourage regional networking among journalists and advance balanced coverage on complex reform issues that are central to the region as well as to the European Union.