Supported projects

Pelvic pain is an umbrella term for pain in the tailbone, hips, buttock region, joints around the sacrum and pubic bone, but also embraces pain and discomfort in the vagina, vulva, perineum, uterus, ovaries, bladder, bowels and pelvic floor muscles.

ST JOHN'S - Barbuda is paradise on earth: a small Caribbean island with beautiful beaches and clear waters full of fish and lobster. Worth noting: on Barbuda, land is not for sale. There is a system of communal land ownership. But cracks are appearing in that, now that property developers have their eye on the island.

COPSA MICA - It is December 1990, the days are short, dark and foggy. Beside the road in Copsa Mica, 2 men are slaughtering a pig. A Romanian Christmas tradition I later learn.

KAMPALA / DAR ES SALAAM - In 2006, British company Tullow Oil discovered oil reserves in the Albertine region in northwestern Uganda. In early 2022, Total signed an agreement with Tanzania and Uganda and Chinese state-owned CNOOC to begin construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). The project will create the largest oil-heated pipeline with a length of 1,443 kilometers between Hoima in Uganda and Tanga in Tanzania, from where crude oil will be exported. But not without consequences.

SOBIBOR - After Auschwitz, Sobibor is the largest Dutch mass grave with more than 34,000 Dutch victims. Starting in 1942, more than 170,000 Jews were gassed here in a year and a half immediately upon arrival. Yet few people know about this death camp. After a successful prisoner uprising in October 1943, the Nazis closed Sobibor, erasing as many traces as possible.

LEUVEN - In the project "Does the Appeltans process bring an end to more than 20 years of slum landlords?" Arne Sonck investigated the power of slum landlords in Leuven. He brings to light how the Leuven landlord Appeltans was able to build a real estate empire by coloring outside the lines, and why the Leuven administration was able to watch this alone for a long time.

BRUSSELS - Journalist and writer Catherine Vuylsteke chronicled the life stories of Mar Maremoto, Ann Telnaes, Rachita Taneja, Doaa El-Adl, Victoria Lomasko and Amany Al-Ali, six women cartoonists from Mexico, the U.S., India, Egypt, Russia and Syria to whom the documentary series Draw for Change, recently awarded at Cannes, is dedicated.

KIEV - Foreign journalists report plenty about the war in Ukraine, and that is dangerous enough. But they're helped by local journalists, "fixers," and they can't just avoid the situation in their country. What does that nonstop work do to these people?

NINOVE - "Marginal triangle," "wing-west for the extreme right," "cultural breakdown strip against the language border. For those who don't live there, it's easy to brush off the Dender region. But how do the residents themselves actually see it?

BRUSSELS/AMSTERDAM - Scientific publications, leaked company data and government data suggest that industry is doing everything possible to deliberately put up a fog curtain around these ultra short PFAS.

Low Countries - In Flanders, we now speak Dutch. But that was not always the case. Less than a century ago, most people spoke their local dialect and the upper social class spoke Flemish-colored General Dutch or French.

DODOMA - Many people are eager to help restore damaged or disappearing forests. But which projects actually contribute to carbon storage, biodiversity protection and quality of life for local people, and which ones make the problems worse?

ANTWERP - Of course you already know that ultra-processed food is not the healthiest choice. Yet you probably eat it far more often than you think (yes, even that healthy-looking jar of humus is ultra-processed), and that may be becoming a problem. After all, scientific research is increasingly convincingly linking ultra-processed food and drink to all sorts of serious health problems, from cardiovascular disease to mental disorders.

DAMASCUS - In No Man's Land, Middle East expert Willem Staes travels across Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. During nine trips between August 2021 and March 2023, he will see for himself how Syrian refugees find themselves in the most hopeless situation since the Syrian revolution in 2011.

LOW COUNTRIES - How the Netherlands and Belgium argue over the Iron Rhine

OOSTAKKER - November 1967. The police raid the Martens-Sotteau orphanage in Oostakker. Following the report of a social worker, it is suspected that the children there are being abused. Father O., Capuchin and confessor, and the guardian P.J. were arrested.

ESSEN/HOOGSTRATEN/PUTTE - Belgian real estate agents are seeing more and more Dutch people moving across the border, in a desperate attempt to find an affordable house in the border region. What does that do to life in a border region. Apache and OC Spit traveled from Essen across Hoogstraten to Putte and spoke with owners.

MOL - Recent research shows that deep in our genes we are easterners. We are largely descended from steppe peoples who crossed into Europe five thousand years ago.

ANTWERPEN - Imagine that your grandmother was secretly a heroine. That there was a whole story behind her that she never told. That's what Sofie discovers when she cleans out her late grandmother's apartment.

GALWAY/NUUK/REYKJAVIK - For months now, the North Atlantic has been plagued by extreme heat waves. The new high-tech research vessel the Belgica is sailing to the polar regions for the first time to document and investigate the effects of climate change in the oceans. Journalists Arno Van Rensbergen and Johannes De Bruycker went on board for a week.

BRUGGE - In Europe, children sometimes end up in prison. Not because they have done something wrong, but because they are the (unborn) child of a convicted, accused or interned woman. Bruges prison even has a special ward where young children can live with their imprisoned mothers.

UNITED STATES - Journalist Daan Ballegeer explores in the United States, the birthplace of the automobile, how that means of transportation has influenced our lives.

BRUSSELS - In an essay, French critic Roland Barthes called the car a magical object, consumed more as an image than an object of use. Can we still see the car as a magical object today?

LUXEMBOURG - Worldwide, public transport is already free, either fully or partially, in more than 275 cities and regions. However, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is an outlier, having become the first country in the world to make all trains, trams and buses completely free for both residents and foreign visitors on 1 March 2020.

BRUSSELS - Twenty years ago, the first SARS outbreak sounded the alarm. But Europe failed to prepare for the Covid-19 pandemic due to a lack of funding for drug research, and may still be unprepared for the next one, argue several prominent scientists interviewed by Stefano Valentino and Gian Paolo Accardo.

BRUSSELS - How do you get declared insanity in Belgium? Journalist Thomas Detombe looked into it and came across serious shortcomings. The decision is made by the judge, who bases it on a psychiatric expert's report. A psychiatrist draws up the report; the judge almost always follows it.

BRUSSELS - The photo report gives an insight into cricket, an underexposed sport in Belgium.

ANTWERPEN/ROTTERDAM - The social damage of air pollution caused by the (petro)chemical sector in the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam runs into billions of euros. This is according to an investigation by Apache and Follow The Money based on official figures on emissions and transfer of pollutants from large industrial facilities.

UKRAINE - Is there room for healing and recovery in the midst of wartime? With that question, photographer Emiel Petrovitch and writer Johannes Decat traveled to Ukraine. Their answers are contained in a series of articles.

BRUSSELS - A good 15 percent of all spending within research and development in Flemish higher education comes from companies. Private companies finance research projects and doctorates and purchase licenses. But the line between close cooperation and conflict of interest between university and company is sometimes wafer-thin.