New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is looking for a college student to join him on a reporting trip to Africa. Last year he selected Casey Parks from Mississippi, who traveled with him through Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and the Central African Republic. Kristof writes that on their trip through central Africa, "Casey and I saw malnourished children, and visited burned-out villages in areas of the Central African Republic that had been caught up in the furies of the spreading Darfur genocide. Pygmy trackers led us through the jungle to see gorillas and elephants, and we managed to be held up at gunpoint by bandits."

The impetus behind this program is Kristoff's belief that "American universities do an execrable job preparing students for global citizenship." He notes that "according to a Roper/National Geographic poll, 38 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 consider speaking another language to be 'not too important.' Sixty-three percent of those young Americans can't find Iraq on a map of the Middle East. And 89 percent don't correspond regularly with anyone outside the U.S."

This year Kristof will once again select a college student but will also welcome a schoolteacher (from either a middle school or high school) for a journey that will include stops in Rwanda, Burundi and Congo. Kristof explains, "If you win the trip, you won't be practicing tourism, but journalism. You'll blog and prepare videos for the New York Times and MySpace Web sites. I'm betting that you'll be able to connect with young
readers and viewers - and galvanize them to care about these issues - in a way that I can't."

The full details will soon be available at www.nytimes.com/winatrip and at www.myspace.com/kristofontheground.

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