Purpose & Public Health Media Network Fellowship
Organization: Voice Up
Initiative: Voice Up Media Network
Location: Remote / Virtual
Mission: We connect people to purpose.
Participation Options
Students may participate in the Voice Up Media Network in several ways based on their interests, academic requirements, and availability.
Paid Special Projects: Selected participants may be assigned paid projects at $20–$30 per hour for up to 10 hours per month.
Academic Credit: Students may participate for internship, practicum, field-placement, independent-study, or other academic credit based on the requirements of their college or university.
Combined Participation: Some students may participate for academic credit while also completing separately assigned paid special projects.
A New Kind of Media Network
The Voice Up Media Network is being built as a first-of-its-kind media network organized around one central mission:
We connect people to purpose.
Most media networks begin with a subject.
Some focus on news.
Some focus on sports.
Some focus on music.
Some focus on business.
Some focus on entertainment.
Voice Up begins somewhere different.
We begin with people and purpose.
The Voice Up Media Network is being developed around the belief that every person has experiences, interests, talents, ideas, history, and stories that can contribute something meaningful to the world.
Our goal is to create a media network where those voices can be discovered, developed, connected, preserved, and shared.
This is not simply a network that people watch.
It is a network that people can help build.
The Purpose Media Network framework describes a model in which people do not simply consume media. They participate, create, and share what matters to them alongside others who care about similar things. Every voice counts, with the entire network united by the mission “We connect people to purpose.”
That philosophy is at the center of this fellowship.
Who We Are Recruiting
Voice Up is intentionally looking beyond traditional definitions of who belongs in media.
We want students from different disciplines, professions, creative communities, universities, cultures, and lived experiences helping build the network.
We are especially interested in student athletes, journalists and storytellers, nurses and future healthcare professionals, historians and researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs, future leaders, creative artists, and musicians.
Student Athletes
Athletes understand leadership, pressure, preparation, teamwork, resilience, identity, performance, competition, success, and disappointment in ways few others do.
We want student athletes to help develop stories and programming around athletics, leadership, mental health, personal development, career transition, community impact, culture, and life beyond competition.
You do not have to major in journalism to have something important to say.
Your lived experience is part of what makes your perspective valuable.
Journalists and Future Storytellers
Journalism students, communications students, filmmakers, writers, broadcasters, photographers, podcasters, and emerging storytellers can help establish the editorial foundation of the network.
Participants may investigate stories, conduct interviews, develop features, produce multimedia content, explore current events, document communities, and help create new forms of purpose-centered journalism.
We want journalists who are willing to go beyond asking:
What happened?
We also want to ask:
Why does it matter?
Who is affected?
Whose perspective is missing?
What can history teach us about what is happening today?
What can people learn from this?
Historians and Researchers
History is central to understanding purpose.
Communities cannot fully understand where they are going without understanding where they have been.
That is why the Voice Up Media Network is specifically looking for historians, history students, archivists, researchers, cultural historians, oral historians, and students interested in preserving stories that might otherwise disappear.
Historians can help investigate people, places, movements, institutions, communities, cultural traditions, music, health, athletics, social movements, and important moments that deserve greater attention.
The network's existing work demonstrates what this can look like. Its Sonic Ancestry Laboratory, for example, is designed around recovering and extending the legacies of important Black composers and musicians through historical research and storytelling.
The supporting Samuel Coleridge-Taylor research illustrates the possibilities. His story intersects music, African diasporic identity, British history, African-American cultural history, representation, and civil rights.
That same approach can be applied to thousands of stories.
A historian might recover the story of a community leader whose contribution has been forgotten.
A student might document the history of healthcare in their hometown.
A researcher might trace the origins of an important social movement.
An oral historian might interview elders before their stories are lost.
A music historian might rediscover an artist whose influence deserves renewed attention.
History does not have to remain inside an archive.
Through media, it can become a living resource connecting generations.
Nurses and Future Health Leaders
Nurses are among the professionals closest to the real human experience of health.
They see patients, families, systems, disparities, successes, frustrations, recovery, prevention, and resilience.
Voice Up wants nursing students and future healthcare professionals to help translate those experiences into stories people can understand.
Possible areas include public health, behavioral health, health education, patient experiences, healthcare innovation, workforce challenges, community health, prevention, wellness, and the human side of medicine.
Healthcare knowledge should not remain trapped inside institutions.
It can become media that helps people.
Innovators, Entrepreneurs, and Future Leaders
Some fellows will help build the network itself.
We are looking for students interested in entrepreneurship, innovation, artificial intelligence, technology, marketing, business development, leadership, social impact, community engagement, and emerging media.
These fellows may explore entirely new ideas for how Voice Up Media can grow.
You might help design a new show.
Build a new digital platform.
Develop an audience strategy.
Create a campus network.
Launch a new publication.
Explore how artificial intelligence can support responsible media creation.
Develop partnerships.
Design new ways for audiences to participate.
Or create something that does not exist yet.
This fellowship is especially well suited for people who look at something new and immediately begin asking:
What could this become?
Creative Artists and Musicians
Music, visual art, photography, film, poetry, dance, design, and other forms of creative expression can communicate things traditional reporting sometimes cannot.
Creative artists and musicians can help Voice Up explore culture, history, identity, community, memory, health, belonging, and purpose.
The network's current framework already connects creative work with historical recovery, cultural storytelling, emotional literacy, health advocacy, identity, and human development.
But this opportunity is not simply about documenting the past.
We want emerging artists to help create what comes next.
A musician might develop a performance series.
A filmmaker might produce a short documentary.
A photographer might document an overlooked community.
A visual artist might translate a complex social issue into something people can immediately understand.
A songwriter might explore how music connects generations.
Creativity itself can become a pathway to purpose.
What Could You Create?
There is no single required media product.
Depending on your interests, your project could become:
a feature story
a podcast
an interview series
a documentary concept
a sports and leadership series
a historical investigation
an oral-history project
a cultural archive
a health education project
a student-athlete platform
a music or arts series
a campus publication
an entrepreneurship feature
a community story
a digital magazine
a photo essay
a video series
a cultural-history project
a public health feature
a behavioral health story
an AI-supported media innovation
a new Voice Up show
or something entirely new.
The network's broader framework already envisions shows, publications, maps, conversations, research, cultural storytelling, and other media formats working together to carry people's ideas into the world.
The fellowship gives students an opportunity to help determine what those formats become.
You Are Joining at the Beginning
One of the most important things to understand about this opportunity is that the Voice Up Media Network is being built now.
You are not joining a 50-year-old media organization with every job already defined.
That is intentional.
Early participants have an opportunity to influence:
the stories we cover,
the histories we preserve,
the audiences we serve,
the shows we create,
the voices we elevate,
the partnerships we establish,
the technology we use,
and even what the network eventually becomes.
That makes this different from a traditional internship.
You are not simply being trained to fit into an existing system.
You are helping create the system.
An Eight-Week Applied Experience
The fellowship can be structured as an eight-week experience.
Weeks 1–2: Discover
Explore the Voice Up mission, learn about the developing media network, study different forms of media and storytelling, and identify the issues, histories, communities, creative interests, or ideas that matter most to you.
Weeks 3–4: Define
Determine your audience, your story, your project, and the purpose behind it.
Ask:
Who needs to hear this?
Why does this matter?
Whose story has not been told?
What would make this useful?
Week 5: Connect
Share your developing idea with other fellows, mentors, professionals, creators, and students across Voice Up.
This cross-disciplinary conversation matters because a student athlete may learn from a historian.
A historian may learn from a nurse.
A nurse may learn from a journalist.
A journalist may learn from an entrepreneur.
An entrepreneur may learn from a musician.
A musician may learn from an athlete.
And all of them may discover that their work is connected.
Weeks 6–7: Build
Create your media product.
Research.
Interview.
Write.
Record.
Design.
Investigate.
Create.
Test.
Edit.
Refine.
Week 8: Share
Present what you created and explore how the work can continue through the Voice Up Media Network.
The goal is to leave the fellowship with something tangible.
Not simply something you studied.
Something you made.
Who Can Apply?
Students from virtually any academic discipline may apply.
We are especially interested in:
Student athletes
Journalists and communications students
Historians and history students
Researchers and archivists
Nursing students
Public and behavioral health students
Entrepreneurs
Business students
Future leaders
Technology and AI students
Writers
Filmmakers
Photographers
Musicians
Visual artists
Designers
Podcasters
Social workers
Educators
and students who simply have something they believe deserves to be explored.
Undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, medical, and professional students may participate.
Your major is not the most important qualification.
Your curiosity is.
What We Are Looking For
We are looking for people willing to listen carefully, ask good questions, work collaboratively, research before reaching conclusions, create something meaningful, respect different perspectives, explore history, experiment with new ideas, and use their talents in service of something larger than themselves.
You do not need to arrive knowing exactly what your purpose is.
Discovering that may be part of the experience.
The Bigger Idea
Media influences what people notice.
What people notice influences what they value.
And what people value influences what they choose to do.
Voice Up Media Network is being created around the belief that media can do more than capture attention.
Media can help people discover what matters to them.
It can introduce someone to a career they never imagined.
Tell the story of a community nobody was covering.
Recover a piece of history that was nearly lost.
Preserve the voice of an elder for another generation.
Help a student athlete understand the leadership skills they already possess.
Allow a nurse to explain something that could improve someone's health.
Give an entrepreneur an opportunity to build something useful.
Give an artist a place to create.
Give a musician a platform to connect generations.
Give a historian the opportunity to bring the past into conversation with the present.
And allow young people from completely different backgrounds to discover that their experiences may be connected by a common purpose.
That is why this network exists.
Voice Up Media Network
Built by people.
Powered by participation.
Preserving stories.
Creating what comes next.
Focused on purpose.
We connect people to purpose.
