Media/Radykalizacja - 29.01-06.02.22 - Poronin, Poland
Rap Video
Objectives
“Media/Radicalization” is a project of social awareness and development, with a Youth Exchange activity that brought together 39 participants, mainly young people (and also some youth workers as group leaders and facilitators) in Poronin, Poland. Besides the common knowledge of what is happening all over Europe and all over the world, in our daily life and also during some of those youth exchanges projects, we could see how easily some young people (both European participants and locals) can be manipulated, misinformed and almost get extremist and even radicalized. This phenomenon can be seen especially in Social Media, widely used by this age group. Furthermore, during several training courses that Impakt has participated in, whose aim is to train youth workers and youth leaders to be capable of preparing, implementing, and evaluating workshops on cultural diversity at the local level and within youth exchanges as part of preventing the radicalisation of young people. Being aware of how the media and social media have an important role, we decided to implement this youth exchange project which will only focus on this subject. We prepared this project with the contributions of our partner organizations, and all of us decided that Poland was the best project venue to bring everyone together and focus on this issue. The overall aim of the exchange was to bring young people from different countries together to get enough knowledge about the importance of media / social media/media literacy for preventing radicalization and marginalization of young people, to raise awareness of using media in a positive way and promoting media literacy and critical thinking among young people. According to the Assembly debate on the 19th of April 2016 of the Council of Europe, preventing children and young people from turning to extremist movements must start at an early age when values and beliefs are formed. Hate speech, xenophobia, Islamophobia and discrimination against young people of Muslim background or other religious communities as such (including refugees arriving in Europe) contribute to exclusion and may further reinforce the religious radicalization of children and young people. Because of this, we implemented our project not only for young people but also for young people, using non-formal and informal educational and artistical methods and activities, to achieve the following specific objectives: - To understand how media / social media affects on young people, children and on our societies; - To develop critical thinking regarding the information they received through the media; - To be aware of the importance of cultural diversity in local, regional and international levels and to develop skills and attitudes to motivate and actively involve our young people in human rights youth projects as preventing the radicalization of young people; - To identify and share similarities & differences in practices used in different countries in terms of Media and Media Literacy; - To promote active participation of young people by using media and social media; - To increase awareness about refugees, asylum seekers and migrants by using media / social media; - To develop a critical approach towards media messages based on their own experiences, skills, beliefs, and values; - To develop their skills in creating media content and creating videos regarding to preventing the radicalization of young people and children; - To offer the opportunity to meet partner groups and develop concrete ideas for future projects focusing on cultural diversity and active participation of young people in order to prevent radicalization of young people; - To support young people to increase their knowledge about Erasmus + Programme and youth exchange projects in order to develop new projects in the future, - To create "professional" videos and use social media very actively in order to reach as many as people possible for the outcomes of our project and for the visibility of the Erasmus + Programme. We also had special attention to the role of media and social media on the refugees' situation, asylum seekers, migrants, islamophobia, foreigners and xenophobia. We will increase awareness about their needs and show - by creating videos and other social media posts - how media and social media can take a positive role in the prevention of young people's radicalization and marginalization, in our countries. We planned all of our activities for reaching out to marginalised young people, building bridges instead of walls, and promoting diversity, intercultural dialogue, and common values of freedom, tolerance and respect for human rights by focusing on enhancing media literacy and critical thinking.
Implementation
“Media/Radicalization” was a youth exchange that brought together a total of 39 young people (including 2 facilitators and 6 group leaders), from six different countries (Portugal, Turkey, Italy, Romania, Poland and Bulgaria), in Poronin, Poland on the 29.01. - 06.02.2022. A third of the group, 25 participants, were young people with fewer opportunities due to political, social, religious, financial problems and/or ethnical obstacles, having cultural differences, demographical isolation or, even, psychological health problems. We had more female participants than male participants because our partners didn't want to reject some really good applicants just because of their gender. We all wanted to give a chance to the best candidates but gender balance was a principle and unquestionable issue for all of us and it wasn't only based on the equal numbers of male and female participants, but also including everyone equally in every single activity. All of our activities were based on respecting gender balance, international group work and active participation of every single participant. All group leaders and participants took part in all aspects of the project from the digital collaboration on the preparation of the project, to attending the exchange in Poronin, and cooperating on the projects' outcomes, dissemination and impact. All activities were led by young people using non-formal and informal methods and they created videos focusing on cultural diversity as cultural richness.
Our participants
Results
We believe that our participants improved their knowledge, skills and attitude based on cultural awareness and expression, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship and learning to learn key competencies. They learned the role of media and social media on the causes of radicalization of children and young people and explore different good examples in different countries, and also, use social media to prevent radicalization of youngsters. The participants explored themselves as human beings who have their own cultural identities. They analysed the differences between identity, culture, cultural diversity, cultural identity, inter-cultural learning and intercultural dialogue. All activities were led by young people using non-formal and informal methods and they created videos which focus on preventing youth radicalization and multicultural dialogue and diversity as cultural richness. We created an Instagram page for the project and share the outcomes of our project on the facebook pages and other social media accounts of all partner organizations. And we expect that the videos created during this youth exchange will be seen by thousands of people. All participants were all the time, very motivated and very proactive in every moment of this YE. All of them showed interest and pleasure in the development of new skills and competencies. The impact of this project could be seen daily in the positive and permanent changes that occurred to several participants, especially in the ones with fewer opportunities, to whom this experience was totally life changing.
Comments