Travis Lupick was one of five recipients of the Seeing the World through New Eyes fellowship, which was established by the Jack Webster Foundation and the Canadian International Development Agency. He will visit Latin American in early 2009 to experience firsthand reporting from developing countries. The fellowship was open to British Columbia-based journalists 30 years old or younger or in their first five years of journalism, and winners were selected by a jury of professional journalists.
Metroland writer Travis Durfee spent the past month taking bucket baths, sleeping on mats and eating lamb kabob as he traveled throughout the Central Asian nation of Afghanistan. In the small city of Kunduz, he observed the crush of patients hoping for an appointment with an eye-doctor's assistant during a two-week camp run by the National Organization for Ophthalmic Rehabilitation. An estimated 2 percent of the country's population is blind, many of them from treatable conditions.
