With his vividly composed narrative on a 3,700-year-old Peruvian culture, BYU communications student Donovan Baltich recently took second place in the Multimedia Enterprise Reporting Competition of the Hearst Journalism Awards. His multimedia article incorporates text, video, and images.
Thanks to a grant from BYU’s Office of Research and Creative Activities (ORCA), which are often funded by donors, Baltich traveled to the Uros Islands—man-made reed islands that float atop Lake Titicaca, Peru. There Baltich saw firsthand the humanitarian efforts of BYU engineering professor Randy Lewis and his students, who were building water-filtration systems with the Uros people.
“There are a thousand things that the Uros don’t have that we could give them,” Baltich explains, but the engineering students do more than just provide supplies. “The students work with them so that the Uros can develop it themselves.”