The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) is offering an online course, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the support of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA).

“Smart Cities: Covering Urban Development in Latin America and the Caribbean” will include a six-week online course in Spanish, English and Portuguese about urban development in Latin America, followed by a five-day fellowship in Washington, D.C., for the program’s most outstanding participants. Journalists in Latin America and the Caribbean are welcome to apply.

The online course will be held Oct. 28 – Dec. 9, 2013. Participants will learn how to cover issues that affect urban planning and development of smart cities, such as transportation, natural disasters, citizen security and infrastructure. The online course will include guest speakers and instructive videos on the topic. The journalists’ work will emphasize story production. Under the terms of their participation, all selected journalists will produce and publish news reports, feature stories, videos, photos and multimedia.

Journalists who complete the course and publish stories on the subject will receive a certificate of course completion.

A committee chaired by the ICFJ will select a small number of participants who produced the best stories to travel to Washington, D.C. in early 2014 for the IDB-IAPA fellowship. During this five-day fellowship, ICFJ will work with the IDB-IAPA fellows to develop further multimedia-rich reports and expand their knowledge on the program’s selected topic through meetings with experts from a variety of organizations, including the IDB. The fellowship also will provide an introduction to data journalism to cover development issues.

Dates for online courses: October 28-December 9, 2013.

Trip to DC: January or February 2014. Dates TBD.

Please apply by October 9, 2013.