Pratap Chatterjee with a two-part series, "Interrogators for Hire" and "Artificial Intelligence?", United States

Pratap Chatterjee is an investigative journalist and producer. He is the author of "Iraq Inc.: A Profitable Occupation" (Seven Stories Press, 2004) and "The Earth Brokers" (Routledge Press, 1994). He has many years of experience working in radio, print and digital media, including hosting a weekly radio show on the Berkeley, California station KPFA, working as global environment editor for Inter Press Service and as a freelance writer for the Financial Times, the Guardian and the Independent of London.

He has won five Project Censored awards as well as a Silver Reel from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters for his work in Afghanistan, and the best business story award from the National Newspaper Association (U.S.), among others.

Pratap has also appeared as a commentator on numerous radio and television shows, ranging from BBC World Service, CNN International, Democracy Now!, Fox and MSNBC. He has served as a board and staff member with many activist groups, such as the Asian Pacific Environmental Network and Project Underground.

Darren Taylor with "A Wind of Hope in Kenya's Desert" , Kenya.

At the age of 11, I decided I wanted to be a journalist. According to my parents, the first word I uttered was "why?" So I guess it made sense. But, after high school in the industrial city of Port Elizabeth, on South Africa's southern coast, I couldn't afford to attend a university which offered journalism. Instead, I obtained a BA at a local college. Some people I know laughed and said BA stood for "Bugger All", and that I'd never get a "real" job with "a bloody BA".

Fortunately, they were right. Upon graduation, I couldn't find work.
Finally, a steel factory employed me as a machine operator. Each lunch break I'd spend time chatting with my colleagues - an assortment of alcoholics, drug addicts, former convicts. I loved their stories: How they fed 7 kids earning 4 dollars a day. How they kicked and screamed their way through life. How some folded into themselves and surrendered to the pain of daily struggle. Through them, my yearning to be a journalist was rekindled. They allowed me to think with my heart, like I'd done when I was 11.

Through sheer will-power, and little else, I forced my way into the South African Broadcasting Corporation, where I was employed as a cub reporter in 1992. In 1995, I was selected as part of a team to cover South Africa's historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated apartheid atrocities. Covering the TRC was a profound and life-changing experience which continues to shape me. Presently, I'm a freelancer based in Nairobi, Kenya.

I still tell stories about factory workers, beggars and thieves. Some people I know still say it isn't a "real" job. And I don't care.

Constanza Vieira with "Caught in the Crossfire, Nasa Indians Take Shelter in Health Post" , Colombia. Original version "Indígenas hacinados entre dos fuegos"

Constanza Vieira has been reporting for IPS from Colombia since August 2003. She was a correspondent for Deutschlandfunk (DLF) in her home city of Bogotá, in German, and for Deutsche Welle, in Spanish. She worked for Deutsche Welle in Cologne, Germany, where she was also correspondent for Colombia's leading political magazine, Semana, and for the radio station Caracol. She was reporter in Colombia for the Financial Times of London (Water Report) and worked in journalistic research with Homelands Productions, a U.S. cooperative of journalists, on series about indigenous rights and sustainable development broadcast by National Public Radio. Constanza served on the editorial board of Ciendías magazine, of CINEP, a Jesuit research, human rights and education centre.

In 1996 she won the Foreign Press Association prize in Colombia for a radio report she did for DLF.

In 2004, when she reached her 30-year anniversary as a journalist, she was awarded with something else: a letter signed by the mayor and 27 leaders of the town of Murindó, in the middle of a Colombian war zone, inviting her to cover a human rights forum. Although the invitation was sent to many media outlets, IPS was the only one to attend the forum, where those who participated were putting their own lives at risk.