Impact Journalism Day: Newspapers unite to bring readers uplifting, solutions-based news

Today is Impact Journalism Day, dedicated to focusing on solutions-based journalism. Forty-eight news organisations from 43 countries are participating by sharing stories of hope, change and innovation.

Every news organisation participating in the Sparknews initiative is publishing stories that highlight solutions to global and local issues. Sparknews is a social enterprise that identifies innovative projects via its video platform, sparknews.com.

The hope is that, by sharing these stories about people, places and events around the world, Impact Journalism Day will inspire global change. At ‘The Irish Times’ we are committed to journalism that contributes to the betterment of society, and we are sharing these inspirational stories with you in that light.

‘The Irish Times’ is joined by the Huffington Post (US), ‘Ta Nea’ (Greece), the ‘Sunday Times’, the ‘Nation’ (Nigeria), the ‘Monitor’ (Uganda), ‘El Heraldo’ (Honduras), the ‘Times of India’ and the ‘Straits Times’ (Singapore), among others. So far this year the initiative has resulted in more than 100 stories – which should reach 100 million readers, plus another 10 million people on social media.

On these pages, and online at irishtimes.com, we look at an after-school initiative that is boosting literacy skills for disadvantaged children in Limerick; Iranian-designed lifeguard drones that outperform humans in lifesaving tests; a floating school in Nigeria; a mobile app that helps partially sighted people to overcome daily problems; and an orchestra using waste products to great effect.

We invite you to get involved by sharing these stories – more are featured on irishtimes.com – with family and friends in print and online. Follow the #ImpactJournalism conversation on Twitter and help the innovators and entrepreneurs in these stories to overcome the challenges they face by joining a brainstorming session (beta.makesense.org/ijd).

We hope you will be inspired.

To find out more about Impact Journalism Day, email impact@sparknews.com