Media, information and digital literacy are nowadays skills competing in importance with basic functional literacies. Acknowledging young people’s need to learn how to responsibly navigate the online space, to identify disinformation and propaganda, and to use technology in ways that do not infringe upon their rights, some institutions of formal education started introducing media literacy elements to their curricula. Romania, Hungary and Moldova are countries where basic media and information literacy skills are lower than the EU average (DESI, 2020). What is worse, basic digital skills are not sufficient to navigate, to assess and to make swift decisions on the media content young people are exposed to. The need we identified as a project team is of inclusive curriculum and methodologies to address these gaps. Thus, the goal of the project is to increase media literacy competencies for young people from difficult socio-economic backgrounds and with cultural difficulties from Hungary, Moldova and Romania so they become more resilient to disinformation. We will achieve this by developing an inclusive media literacy program that addresses youth from less served backgrounds and youth workers engaged with these groups. Project objectives O1. Development of an integrated inclusive media and information literacy program for youth workers employing non-formal methodologies with young people with social obstacles and cultural difficulties from RO, MD, HU for a duration of 30 months. O2. Development of competences on inclusive media and information literacy program with the aid of ToT methodology and training materials for 25 youth workers working with disadvantaged young people from MD, RO, HU for a duration of 21 months. O3. Development of a promotional campaign for the two intellectual outputs (integrated program on inclusive media and information literacy program for youth workers and TOT-training design of learning activity) for 200 youth workers, media and youth sector organizations for a duration of 30 months. Project results Intellectual outputs realized under the project are: Two intellectual outputs, namely one curriculum on inclusive media and information literacy program for youth workers and ToT methodology and training materials for youth workers on inclusive media literacy (in English, Hungarian and Romanian. Training and learning activities: four workshops for testing media literacy materials. Train-the-Trainer (ToT) workshop with 25 participants from Hungary, Moldova and Romania. Dissemination activities: 25 follow-up activities implemented by the trained youth workers in the project that will include short movies/ demos of inclusive methods and tools, articles and pictures. 1 promotional campaign that will include communication and dissemination activities. 1 online, free and open platform for all project content. The platform will provide the space and the context to disseminate nationally and internationally the IOs and resources developed in this project, aiming to reach countries where Romanian and Hungarian speaking youth live, including migrant and minority communities from outside national borders. Giving that the content and platform will be in English as well, we will disseminate the content among international partners and media literacy stakeholders dissemination in the national press and social media campaigns to promote the products of the IOs and the issues surrounding inclusive education practices. The project team has been assembled for their expertise, their geographical location and their proven capacity to implement complex activities: The Center for Independent Journalism (CJI), Romania and the Association for an Independent Press (API), Moldova and three youth focused organisations with different profiles, namely Artemisszio, Hungary- with a strong focus on inclusive competency development, Turul Madar, Romania-with a focus on cultural education for young people, and the Civic Resource Center (CRC), Romania-with a focus on democratic and civic programs for young people. The blend of media expertise, civic, cultural and inclusive education for young people is the main strategic element of our partnership offering new innovative approaches to each partner. The InMedia project is committed to open and free education, and for this reason all its course materials and methodologies, will be made available on an open online teaching platform, in English, Hungarian and Romanian. We aim to reach with this project primarily youth workers engaged with vulnerable youth, young people with socio economic and cultural difficulties, and media and education specialists. However, our larger audience is formed by parents, teachers, local and national decision makers, and at a European level policy makers.
InMedia set out to address the lack of media literacy competence in vulnerable youth. In doing so, another part of its goal was to address the lack of media literacy competencies in youth workers involved with said communities. Overall, its main goal was to develop an integrated inclusive media literacy programme that would enable youth workers to develop transferable media literacy competencies so that they could support youth with various cultural, social or economical obstacles to also develop those competencies. The main objectives of the project were: O1. Development of an integrated inclusive media literacy program for youth workers employing non-formal methodologies with young people with social obstacles and cultural difficulties from RO, MD, HU. O2. Development of competencies on inclusive media and information literacy program with the aid of ToT methodology and training materials for 25 youth workers working with disadvantaged young people from MD, RO, HU. O3. Development of a promotional campaign for the two intellectual outputs for 200 youth workers, media and education professionals etc. The objectives were achieved and some indicators even overachieved, rounding up to a meaningful intervention in the 3 countries.
Media and digital literacy are nowadays skills competing with basic functional literacies. Acknowledging young people’s need to learn how to responsibly navigate the information disorder, to identify disinformation and propaganda, and to use technology in ways that do not infringe upon their rights or others’ is crucial. At the time of the application, according to the 2020 Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), Romania ranks as one of the countries with the smallest number of inhabitants who have basic digital skills in the EU. Hungary fares better, but is still in the last 10 out of the 29 EU countries. Eurostat statistics show that young people between 16-24 years old have basic literacy skills in 68% of cases in Hungary and 56% in Romania, while the EU28 average is as high as 82%. Statistics for the vocational and educational sector in Moldova show that, in 2019, 23% of students don’t have basic digital skills and only 16% have medium to high digital skills. Moreover, most initiatives to bring media literacy to young people do not address those who live in vulnerable conditions, deepening the gap both in terms of media literacy and the digital divide. It is exactly the needs of the vulnerable that this project addressed.