About
just as we were forced to cope as students, people around the world turned to coping in different ways. Coronavirus reminds us why it’s important to
As we write this on 11 May, over 250,000 people have died from COVID-19 and more than 4 million have tested positive for it. The widespread, global effect of the pandemic feels very tangible as we trade stories of heartbreak and loss over our weekly Zoom calls from all over the world.
We are a group of graduate students from 12 countries who traveled to New York City for a common goal: take part in a digital innovation program at NYU Journalism called Studio 20. What we didn't expect was that all of a sudden, the idea of innovation would have so much weight added to it, becoming a matter of survival for people around the globe.
We started the year eager to tell stories unique to New York City, but now we aim to tell you stories about this pandemic that has affected the lives of every single person on the planet. From Ecuador to Pakistan, from Brazil to New York City, we want to tell stories about how people are innovating with what they can. Sometimes, that means creating an advanced technological system to keep track of citizens' health conditions. But sometimes, innovation means something as simple as encouraging acts of solidarity.
We hope to show how businesses thrive under extraordinary circumstances and how couples profess their love for one another while social distancing, while also showing you how joblessness and evictions have altered the DNA of an entire generation. As we ourselves attempt to cope with losses of our own, we continue to report on the state of the world while self-isolating, while on pause. These are stories of coping, innovation, and everything else that brings us all together at this moment. These are stories about humanity, from a world upended.
