Gabriella Jóźwiak - Freelance Journalist

  I spoke on the Freelancing For Journalists podcast about my work covering how the war in Ukraine is impacting children's mental health and education. This followed my receiving the Freelancing For Journalists 2023 Best Print Journalist Award.  You can listed to the podcast here . 

Back to school preparations have never been more grim. Svitlana Bozhko and her colleagues at the Lviv District Gymnasium spent the summer installing metal bars across windows and blocking others from potential missile blasts with heavy sandbags. Then, the teachers boxed and hauled up the entire school library from its basement to the third floor, to create an enormous air raid shelter. But despite the risks that lie ahead, Bozhko laughs joyfully at the prospect of the new term beginning on September 1. “We are really looking forward to it,” she said. “If I were a teacher in Kharkhiv I wouldn’t be so happy, believe me...” Read the full story on thetelegraph.co.uk . And the follow-up piece: Joy and trauma meet as Ukraine’s children return to classrooms . This article was written as part of my work for the 2022 Early Childhood Global Reporting Fellowship at the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma at the Columbia Journalism School.

I was named Best HR newcomer to journalism 2012 last week, at an awards ceremony held by international HR specialists, Towers Watson . Unfortunately I was unable to attend the ceremony, but am absolutely thrilled to have my work for Payroll World magazine recognised in this way. Speaking after the ceremony, Chantal Free, HR Award judge and UK head of rewards, talent and communications at Towers Watson, said: "A special mention should go to the HR Newcomers category which was one of the strongest and most competitively fought awards this year. The judges all agreed that the quality of entries in this category bodes well for the future of HR journalism.” I began writing about HR and payroll in December 2010 when I became senior reporter at Payroll World magazine. Click here for the press release with full details of all the awards and winners .

Ahead of tomorrow's local elections and AV referendum, today I published a comment piece on the Guardian online arguing that employees should be allowed to take time off of work to vote. The subject certainly caused a debate - you can read the article in full and comments here.

To mark this year's International Women's Day , I did some research with Women in Journalism on the gender balance of journalists in the UK's top newspapers. We used data from Cision for the research, who interviewed me about our findings for their blog. You can read the results here . They also did this profile of me , which explains a bit about how I got into journalism. Our research was picked up in a number of publications, such as this Guardian blog by Roy Greenslade and the Press Gazette .

My latest offering and something I've wanted to write about for a while now. Having trawled the internet for good information about cystitis, I'm relieved there's now some straight-talking advice available online. And what better place to put it than on TheSite.org? A great place to solve all sorts of problems. Health piece on cystitis

I've been at Payroll World since just before Christmas, writing about all sorts of issues related to pay, HR, employment law and technology. You can read the cover story I wrote for February's issue here about how apps are going to revolutionise office management, and also keep up to date with the latest online news at www.PayrollWorld.com. I've written a few exclusives so far, namely this story on how HMRC managed to create incorrect tax codes for thousands of the clergy , and this one about the cuts at the BBC . The Church of England story was picked up by the Daily Mail .

My interviews with three young entrepreneurs have gone live on www.Lifetracks.com - a brilliant website for young people looking for advice on training, education and careers. These guys are so inspiring, and great they could give their time to help other young people who want to follow their examples: How I became a successful entrepreneur .