Bujumbura December 14th (ABP) – 25 leaders of youth associations have been taking part since Monday, December 13, 2021, in Bujumbura, to an initial training workshop on Media and Information Education (EMI) organized by the UNESCO House for Peace and Culture in Burundi. The activity was opened by Serge Banyimbe of the UNESCO Regional Office for Central Africa, a check by ABP has revealed.
The activity is part of the Media and Information Education for Youth Civic Engagement project funded by Japan and implemented in 6 African countries such as Burundi, Burkina-Faso, Ethiopia, Gabon, Namibia and Nigeria.
Media and information education is education aimed at developing critical thinking in consumer practices, and in the production and dissemination of media information, Serge Banyimbe said. It provides reading skills and critical understanding of information and all of its dissemination channels / media. The aim of the project is to equip youth-led organizations with EMI skills as part of their daily use of social media and the internet in general, and to actively engage as peer educators in combating disinformation and hate speech online, preventing violent extremism, promoting dialogue and peace, to name but a few.
The training will address, among other topics, the creation of information / disinformation; freedom of expression and hate speech; gender representations and stereotypes in the media; media and technology challenges and opportunities; civic engagement through the media.
Participants in the training will subsequently benefit from support in the development of internal policies, strategies that will allow them to integrate those issues into the operations and policies of their organizations within the framework of various mandates or missions.
Three local Burundian organizations that will benefit from enhanced training will provide post-training coaching to the associations involved. Beyond the individual engagement of young people in media and information education, the project gradually aims to increase the access of young Burundians to multimedia micro-learning content on social media, led and created by young people, in preparation for the wide institutional adoption and dissemination of this approach as an approach to development and peacebuilding.