Nowadays, digital media skills are needed for almost every aspect of our life, especially work and citizenship. Digital skills are necessary as more and more people in all different sectors of society are creators and consumers of content. The problem which Get It Right Project addresses is the absence of critical thinking of citizens, of young people especially, that leads to reckless social and political actions. Therefore, the main aim of the project is to develop the skills and abilities of youth in order to be able to analyze the abundance of information they are exposed to everyday. The project idea started from the permanent concerns of RYMD Association in developing youth skills in order to become active citizens. Starting from the premises described above, we have set the following objectives: -Developing new skills and competencies of 18 European youth workers in the field of media literacy in accord with EU values; -Developing new abilities, such as critical thinking, how to interpret/analyze an article, how to use social media in a responsible way for 180 European young people during the implementation of 9 experimental laboratories in the participating countries; -Raising awareness among 5000 people from the European countries about the importance of critical selection of content, recognition of catchy and false information or the evaluation of the messages using relevant strategies. Get it Right Project will reach a significant number of participants: -18 trainers/youth workers from all 3 participating countries: Ireland, Greece and Romania; -180 participants of the Experimental Laboratories, 3 for each participant country – the first beneficiaries of the media literacy course. They will be will be elementary and high school students; -60 teachers that will participate at the multiplier events; -5000 Internet users who will be informed about the research conclusions, the developed course and other useful information regarding media education. The project includes a series of activities described below. During the two-days kick-off meeting the team will share the project’s objectives and review the activity plan. The research and documentation on media literacy in each participating country will employ a total of 6 focus groups of minimum 10 participants (2 per country, 60 participants), surveys, qualitative data analysis and literature review. Developing the Media Literacy module will be coordinated by RYMD and will fully create a course design on media literacy. During Train the Trainers, 18 trainers/youth workers from the participating countries (6 for each) will learn about the media literacy field so they can spread the importance of media education among young people in their community. All 9 experimental laboratories will develop the skills and competences in media literacies of 180 young people from each partner country and will test the new created course in order to adapt/improve it accordingly to the needs and observations received. During the local and mid-term meetings the partners will discuss the challenges faced during the workshops, summarize the feedback received from the participants and include all the recommendations in the final version of the training course. As a media literacy awareness activity, each partner will organize an Info Day about media literacy and its importance among youth in its community. During the evaluation visit we’ll analyze the whole process of the project implementation and establish ways for fully disseminating the results of the project. Get it Right Project will be promoted and disseminated both online and offline. The main channels of communication of the project’s activities and results will be the presentation website, the Facebook page, and the Twitter account. Also, each partner will engage in all the activities it will host the local press in order to assure the visibility of the project and results. In carrying out the project, will be used a traditional, but adaptive methodology. All partners will be reliant upon the completion of activities. All 3 organizations, RYMD, Donegal Youth Service and Inter Alia, will contribute to providing support and feedback to the team members, enabling the project to reach its results and impact. The main result of the project is the media literacy training course that will help and enable youngsters to decipher the good from the bad in digital media. Also, the support materials developed during the implementation of the project (the media literacy research from the participant’s countries, the project’s website, the information materials on media literacy) will help the work of civic activists, teachers, trainers on their way of improving/developing the critical thinking of the nowadays young people. Basically, the people involved in the project will learn and understand the importance of getting to the heart of the story and checking the source, without being misled by fake news.
Get it Right is a project implemented in partnership between Romanian Youth Movement for Democracy (RYMD), Donegal Youth Service (Ireland), and Inter Alia (Greece). The Project focus is on media literacy and providing an opportunity for young people to examine the concept of Fake News. The main aims of Get it Right have been to develop skills and competencies of youth workers in the field of media literacy; to cultivate new abilities, such as critical thinking, text interpretation/analysis, responsible use of social media, with a view to raise awareness among people from the European countries about the importance of media literacy. In doing so, the project involved hundreds of trainers, youth workers and young people who participated in the development of the methods described below. Spanning 28 months, from 1st September 2018 to 31st December 2020, going through the challenges of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the project has involved participants from Romania, Greece and Ireland and it was structured starting from the needs of the beneficiaries, going to developing, testing and promoting the final result. In the first part of the project, the three partner organizations have realized a field research in order to find out media literacy education practices, the online behavior of the young people, and the main risks they are facing when they use the internet. In the second part, the course was developed in accordance with the findings of the research, this phase going side-by-side with testing the educational methods developed. 18 trainers, youth workers and youth leaders (6 from each participating country) have been informed in media literacy and taught to use the developed course, and a total of 194 young people aged 14 to 35 participated held experimental laboratories in order to test and review it, with special attention being accorded to the young people from with lower opportunities, such as young people from rural areas, young people with health problems or LGBT. More than 20000 people were informed through the online channels about the projects' activities, results and learned about became more aware of the importance of the evaluation of the information using relevant strategies. This Media Literacy non-formal learning guide is the main outcome of the Get it Right project. The course handbook offers a selection of 32 non-formal learning methods to enhance media education among young people. The descriptions of the methods provide the duration, group size, materials needed, concrete steps to do the work questions for Debriefing & Reflection, Learning Outcomes, and other additional resources. We hope that the course handbook will help trainers, youth workers, teachers and any interested person or organization working in media education to contribute to the raising of the level of critical thinking of future generations.