Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada Announces 2023 Media Fellowships

VANCOUVER, BC – September 19, 2023 – The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (APF Canada) is pleased to announce its two Media Fellowship recipients for 2023.

Each year, the APF Canada Media Fellowship Program offers Canadian journalists the opportunity to spend time in Asia researching and preparing stories for Canadian audiences. The goal of the program is to help Canadian journalists become better informed about this dynamic part of the world to write and broadcast insightfully on Asia and the Canada-Asia relationship.

The program, suspended for three years during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the global health crisis and international travel restrictions, has supported 96 Canadian journalists since its inception in 1986.

APF Canada’s $10,000 2023 Media Fellowships are awarded to Yvonne Lau and Robert Williams.

  • Yvonne Lau is a Vancouver, British Columbia-based news and features journalist. She covers stories at the intersection of business and society with an eye on China and Russia. She is currently working on long-form features, photo essays, and special projects for Forbes, Maclean’s, The Walrus, and Broadview, among others. Most recently, Yvonne was a writer for Fortune’s Asia bureau, where she covered China's tech crackdown and Russia's war on Ukraine. She is a participant in Room Up Front's 2023-2024 BIPOC photojournalism mentorship program. Yvonne’s APF Canada Media Fellowship will take her to Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, to explore that country’s role in the global green economy transition, with a focus on the impacts of the race to secure electric vehicle-related materials on Indonesia’s ecosystems.
     
  • Robert Williams is a Kitchener, Ontario-based journalist and feature writer for the Waterloo Region Record. As part of The Record’s investigations unit, he has worked on long-term projects on black market cannabis, public education achievement outcomes, and the Government of Ontario’s pandemic response. Robert is a winner of the Goff Penny Award and Atlantic Journalism Award for feature writing, and his work has appeared in publications across Canada, including the Toronto StariPolitics, and the Telegraph-Journal. Robert’s Media Fellowship will take him to New Delhi and the Indian state of Punjab to meet with prospective and returning Indian international students to document the dreams, sacrifices, and realities of moving to Canada in pursuit of a post-secondary education.

For more details on the APF Canada Media Fellowship Program and how to apply, please follow this link: www.asiapacific.ca/grants/media-fellowships

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About the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada

The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada is dedicated to strengthening ties between Canada and Asia with a focus on expanding economic relations through trade, investment and innovation; promoting Canada’s expertise in offering solutions to Asia’s climate change, energy, food security and natural resource management challenges; building Asia skills and competencies among Canadians, including young Canadians; and, improving Canadians’ general understanding of Asia and its growing global influence.

Visit APF Canada at www.asiapacific.ca

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