Our Journalists
Jazzmin Jiwa
United States 🇺🇸 Jazzmin is a print journalist and television producer of news and documentaries in the United States, the Middle East, Africa and Europe with a focus on post-conflict zones, politics and survival. She has reported for outlets including BBC World News, Reuters and The New Humanitarian, after starting her career as a newspaper reporter in England.
Inspired by the grit and resilience of the many survivors of conflict and oppression she interviewed around the world, Jazzmin founded Stories Of Survival with California-based software engineers grounding the concept in the principles of social impact, voices, healing and pluralism. The project attracted nearly 300K followers in just a few months.
Jazzmin is a British-born South Asian from Uganda and is currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Sandra Hercegová
Canada 🇨🇦 Sandra graduated from Concordia University with a Bachelor’s degree in Communications before going on to a graduate diploma in Visual Journalism. She found her passion for storytelling through the university’s independent student-run newspaper, The Concordian. As an editor for four years, she fell in love with the art of interviewing, listening and sharing people’s perspectives. She completed an internship and freelanced for The Eastern Door, a newspaper serving the community of Kahnawake, Quebec. She gravitates towards stories rooted in social justice, wanting to make sure as many voices as possible are heard and that all sides of the story are told so we can think deeply about and question the way our society functions.
This inspired her to give her time to Stories Of Survival where she conducted a series of interviews around the world throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Odongo Jimmy
Uganda 🇺🇬 Jimmy is a Producer, Photographer and Fixer based in Kampala, Uganda. Having impressive access to stories across Uganda, he regularly works with national, regional and foreign media companies, including the New York Times; the Daily Mail; Swiss national television and radio; Getty Images and Redux Pictures.
For Stories Of Survival, Jimmy has shed light on underreported stories in Uganda. With a particular focus on Ugandan and South Sudanese refugee communities, he has amplified their voices with touching accounts and photography. He thrives when he is telling inspiring stories and seeks to transform the world through reporting them.
Yazmeen Kanji
Canada 🇨🇦 Yazmeen is a Dean's Scholar graduate from the University of Toronto where she studied Peace, Conflict and Justice Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs, Equity Studies and Cinema Studies. She is an emerging filmmaker and the founder of Films With A Cause, an organization dedicated to producing and promoting content that highlights stories of historically marginalized communities. Yazmeen has primarily reported on immigrant and refugee stories for Stories of Survival, inspired by the interviews she regularly conducts in her filmmaking work.
Yazmeen has facilitated a collaboration between Stories Of Survival and the Films With A Cause docu-series, Stories of Spirit, which uniquely highlights the experiences of individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. Yazmeen is passionate about telling stories that challenge how we view those that are often misunderstood and mistreated across different social and political contexts.
Shafi Mohammed
Bangladesh 🇧🇩 An experienced reporter, production assistant and fixer, Shafi has worked with international journalists and filmmakers on stories about refugees and migration. His reports are broadcast and printed by the BBC, CNN, ABC, Al-Jazeera, The New Humanitarian, The Sun and The New York Times. Having been a refugee since the age of five, Shafi is a self-made journalist who works from and lives in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. He and his family escaped the genocide in Burma, when he was five-years-old.
For Stories Of Survival, he published a series of candid accounts from refugees inside Cox’s Bazar’s camps shortly after hundreds has been turned away from Malaysia despite embarking on a treacherous boat journey from Bangladesh.