Congratulations to Jody Santos, Associate Teaching Professor of Journalism: her Disability Justice Project (DJP) has received a $450,000, three-year grant from the Ford Foundation to support its continued work training disabled activists around the world in documentary storytelling to shift how disability is covered in their communities and globally.

The DJP, which Jody founded and runs, has also secured a $15,000 grant from Global Greengrants Fund to pilot a six-session virtual workshop focused on climate storytelling, supporting participants in producing and sharing short, disability-led video reporting using mobile tools and social media.

In May, Jody will travel with the World Bank to Sydney, Australia, to train disabled Indigenous activists in creating social media videos related to inclusive health care. One of the DJP’s recent films, The Road to Til, about a landslide in the remote Himalayas and its impact on disabled residents, has been selected for the Nepal Panorama documentary section of the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival, Nepal’s largest and longest-running film festival, and invited to its Travelling KIMFF program.

Jody explains further about the Disability Justice Project, “We believe change happens when storytelling is led by those most impacted. That’s why we ship camera kits across continents and collaborate directly with disabled activists to document lived realities too often ignored by mainstream media, like the disproportionate impact of climate change on people with disabilities. These stories from our global newsroom are calls to action, reaching critical audiences at venues such as the UN and international film festivals, where they influence public opinion, policy, and funding priorities. An award-winning project of the Center for Independent Documentary (CID), the DJP is a leader in accessible media, incorporating captions, audio descriptions, and interactive transcripts into our videos and offering plain-language instructions on using this site and its accessibility settings.”

Header Image is from the DJP’s documentary The Road to Til