Develop media literacy – Foster youth participation! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Develop media literacy – Foster youth participation!

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

In the last years, in the context of Europe and the global political background of Europe, people living in Europe, including Russian-speaking young people from the Baltics, Poland, Finland and Germany, are faced with information analyzes of the difficulties that come from the media or from the Internet, and problems with the formation and perception of their personal opinion. Through the formation of a person and a potential citizen, young people come across and suffer under the influence of mass media manipulation, which directly affects the development of the society’s opinion on important issues of life for young people. Against the backdrop of topical issues and comprehensive propaganda, extremism, discrimination, intolerance, xenophobia, radicalism, aggressions are spreading among young people.
Media has an important role here, which unilaterally reveals political events and processes in today’s world, and this one-sidedness is often associated with a semblance of rebroadcasting and the position of special political or ideological forces. Different methods of manipulation are used in media and in the Internet: visual, linguistic, stereotyping and demagogy methods. These manipulations are particularly dangerous in explaining the more acute issues that have emerged in recent years, such as defining common European values, objectively identifying military conflicts, clarifying political and social events, and the problem of migration.
The idea of the project comes from the fact that today’s young people are not so well-educated in this field and they need additional knowledge and additional experience. It affects both young people and youth workers.
We considered it important to organize this project in an international level, because the problem that the project concerned has a widespread dissemination: the problems are not local but international. Russian-speaking young people are living throughout Europe today, and in many ways, their opinions and attitudes towards events will depend on which languages they receive and the channels they receive. In addition to the international (European) level, the project now allows the participating organizations to share positive experiences and information in order to get new projects in the broader perspective of the project.
The aim of the project was to foster youth participation and develop youth citizenship, the formation of its active life and civil position through the exchange of positive experience and information in the field of media literacy and Internet competence, exhannge of experience and the ability to defend their point of view and resist propaganda and manipulation.
The project was attended by 6 partners from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Finland and Poland. During 13 months, 2 workshops, 3 international events were held, which included training, exchange of experience and guidance by experts, local events, creation of a web-based manual. Altogether 900 young people from 6 countries were involved in the project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 69193,75 Eur

Project Coordinator

Noorteorganisatsioon Ida Noored & Country: EE

Project Partners

• Suomen venäläisten etujärjestö ry
• Klaipedos multikulturinis centras
• Eiropas mazakumtautibu jaunatnes tikls
• Fundacja “Bialoruski Dom”
• Verband der russischsprachigen Jugend in Deutschland JunOst e.V.