The International Center for Journalists named four new Knight International Journalism Fellows at a June 23 reception at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., including the first from Brazil, Serbia and Uganda.

Two of the Fellows will work on a new program designed to improve and expand coverage of issues relating to poverty and its alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa. The Fellows are Sylvia Vollenhoven, a broadcast and print journalist and media trainer from South Africa, who will work in Ghana, and Joachim Buwembo, a veteran newspaper editor from Uganda who will work in Tanzania.

They will each create new networks linking professional journalists at major news outlets with local and citizen journalists in rural areas via mobile technology. The new teams will focus on issues such as agriculture, rural development, sanitation and microfinance. These two fellowships are also supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The other Knight Fellows will focus their efforts on Brazil and Serbia.

Bruno Garcez, a BBC radio correspondent and multimedia journalist from Rio de Janeiro, will work with investigative journalism group ABRAJI to build a network of rural journalists able to report on land reform, poverty and corruption. A Web site dedicated to the new group will make print and multimedia stories available to mainstream media.

Miodrag Savic, a Belgrade-based print and online journalist who formerly worked at The Associated Press, will raise financial literacy in Serbia and the region by creating teams of sophisticated business journalists. They will investigate corruption and hold companies accountable in a country moving towards EU membership and away from government control of the economy.

The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) administers the Knight International Journalism Fellowships, which make tangible changes that improve the quality and free flow of news in the public interest around the world.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation invests in journalism excellence worldwide and in the vitality of U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950, the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance quality journalism and freedom of expression. Knight Foundation focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. For more information, visit www.knightfoundation.org.