Investigative journalists from Russia (and the former U.S.S.R), Eastern Europe, The Balkans, Caucasus, Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America are now welcome to apply for grants that will cover their travel and stay at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference 2008 at Lillehammer, Norway, September 11-14.

We especially invite journalists who are willing to show and share their experiences and work, through presentations at the conference. If you are able to demonstrate how you worked with your life's best investigative story, you might pick up a ticket to the conference in the olympic city of Lillehammer, Norway.

Our goal is to gather some of the world's best examples of investigative journalism in recent years. Between 400 and 500 investigative reporters are expected to participate at the conference.

The main focus during seminars will be journalistic work methods, how journalists are using their skills, patience, eagerness to dig up dirt and neat techniques to get in touch with sources, better research material and in the end, good stories that makes a difference.

We are also going to cover how difficult it is to do investigative journalism in certain parts of the world.

GIJ2008 is also going to be a unique place to do networking to get your own global contact net. We intend to facilitate trans-national investigative journalism cooperation on the topics you cover.

Funding from SKUP (The Norwegian foundation for investigative journalism), Norway's Foreign Ministry and cooperating investigative journalism organizations will help us make the Lillehammer event a true Global conference.

Please send your applications to gijc2008@gmail.com

Please supply the application with your CV, a short summary of your work in the field of investigative journalism and personal references. It will also help us if you can get references from organizations working with investigative journalism.

We have a rolling deadline, and applications will be evaluated as they come in. You will be hearing from us regarding your application!

Can you please spread the word about this to all your contacts, and please re-publish any content you like from our conference blog site.

Here you will also find downloadable banners to promote the conference at your websites.

And everybody: Feel free to send us ideas about panelists and program content!

Use this e-mail to share your ideas: gijc2008@gmail.com