You need to make sure that what you want to write about is suited to our remit. For more about the organisation’s positions on various issues and ethos, please check out our FAQ section here.

After you’ve done that, here are a few basic points to remember as you set about coming up with your idea:

  • What makes me qualified to write about this particular issue? If you have been through something yourself, or someone close to you has, then you should make this experience the central part of the story, using your own voice in the first person (‘I’), or writing it using key experiences another subject may provide to you. You need to link this to our remit.
  • If you are writing about a trend, something you’ve noticed happening over time in your community, or in the country, then you need to provide some basic factual evidence to back it up. It’s a bit like a lawyer presenting a point-of-view in court; the more evidence, the better the story. This evidence can come in the form of people whom you cite in the story, authoritative voices (like community leaders or academics), or statistics. Both work well together.
  • Do a bit of research to see if anybody has written anything like you want to before. If so, think about how you will make your story different, or how you might take their idea further.

(NOTE: CAGE represents cases of individuals based on the remit of our work. Supporting a case does not mean we agree with the views or actions of the individual. Content published on CAGE may not reflect the official position of our organisation.)