According to the research conducted by National Youth Council of Serbia (NYCS), there is big gap between youth and media. Media report on youth three times more often in negative, than in positive context. It is exception rather than norm that media report on cultural content, opportunities for youth or youth activism, and it is mostly reported on youth in black chronicle segment. Even if media report on challenges or problem young people face in Serbia, it is never in depth analysis nor is this media content providing solution.
On the other hand, neither is traditional media source of information for young people, as they are keep themselves informed through social networks, which is unregulated space for fake news and false information. According to the NYCS Alternative report on position and needs of youth for 2022, numbers show that young people visit informative websites or apps even less than last year, whereas number for informing through social networks are higher.
Having in mind above mentioned, through programme “Advancing Media and Youth CSOs Partnership for Prosperous Democratic Development in Serbia” local media are supported to create quality content relevant for and consumed by youth, and young people are motivated to be more active in their communities and to take part in decision-making processes.
Belgrade Open School is implementing this programme for the second year, providing financial and mentoring support, as well as a capacity building programme for eight youth civil society organizations and eight media which will implement joint projects. The importance of such programme is shown in raised interest of youth - more than 800 young people participated in various trainings, lectures and events and thus improved their knowledge about media literacy and fake news, sexual violence, activism and interculturality.
The first activity within the second programme year was Kick off training. The focus of the kick-off training was to get participants introduced to the requirements of the Programme in terms of project and financial management. Also, participants had the opportunity meet each other and to present each other their projects.
Besides this, participants had the opportunity to discuss public advocacy tactics, engagement of the community and youth with Vladimir Pavlovic, Senior Policy Advisor, who provided them with the insights on how to network and establish partnerships with different actors in order to improve public policies.
Further, participants attended session which tackled importance of social networks in communication with youth and their specificities. With the expert in digital marketing, Nikola Jagodic, participant had the opportunity to analyse their appearance on social networks with social media expert. He pointed out shortcomings of it and gave advices on how to improve their visibility.
Kick-off training was held in Vrnjacka banja, from 31 August until 2 September 2022. The programme “Advancing Media and Youth CSOS Partnership for Prosperous Democratic Development in Serbia” is implemented with the support of the Kingdom of Sweden.
Gallery may be visited HERE.