Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Strategic Objectives
• to strengthen the ability of youth to use a wide range of media tools to disseminate
messages of concern to youth in the region;
• to help create the necessary critical mass for young people to act collectively with a
common set of interests and to be a genuine force for positive social change;
• to increase access for young people to relevant information that will empower them to
make more effective decisions concerning their lives;
• to build networks and alliances between youth-led organisations in the region and beyond;
• to inform the broader community (non-youth) of the situation for youth in the region: their
lives, livelihoods, their aspirations, their problems, their solutions and their unique
contribution processes of development.
A barrier to improving this situation is that the mass of people are not aware of the
seriousness of the problem, nor of the actions they could take that would allocate resources
more equitably leading to greater benefits for all. At the same time, there is often distorted
information concerning youth , portraying them as a problem, or as a dependent group that
fails to contribute responsibly to the region's social, political and economic development. In
particular, there is limited dissemination through the media of articles and programmes that
convey simple but effective messages about youth, that provide up to date data about their
lives and aspirations, and that persuade their audiences to act in their interest.
Increasingly, youth themselves want to have a far greater role in the production and
dissemination of such media messages. They have the skills to use a wide range of media
channels: drama, creative arts, writing and speaking. They have the further advantage that
they are able to access and use new technologies in order to make their message more
powerful and to reach diverse audiences. They simply face a temporary barrier – that they
don’t have enough access to technology support, and to public forums through the media.
Access to information is often unfairly distributed – those with more connections (wasta) get
more access about jobs, opportunity, resources etc. The more marginalised youth tend to
receive less diverse information and this in turn often leads them to reject alternative world
views simply because they feel excluded.
The GCM awareness raising team will reach out across the whole region, bringing messages
and information to some 5 million people in the 16 countries through mass media channels
and 100,000 face to face. Each country will recruit a core team of around 10-20 youth out-
reachers to lead the campaigns.
Human Rights
• Citizenship
• Education rights
• Raising awareness about specific examples of human rights violations
Education
• Rights to education
Print media (read us, print us, see us, hear Mobile based
us) • Messaging key slogans
• Writing competition • Ringtones
• Letters to the editor / News articles • Using message to organise meetings /
• Press releases rally support
• Flyers / posers / supplements to • Taking mobile images of events (urgent,
newspapers youth, grassroots)
• E-magazine with clips • posting mobile pictures on sites
• Bi-lingual magazine • Twitter
• Journalism 'school' output •
Mechanisms of Interaction
Face-to-face -The network will rely on both face-to-face and virtual working. The national
team will have the opportunity to work face to face at the local level. They will be encouraged
to coordinate with other national teams virtually and by sending representatives/ exchanges/
to sub-regional training and forums.
Virtual meetings - Groups will be encouraged to use e-tools for virtual meetings (chat, skype
talk, facebook, messaging etc). Horizontal linkages between youth will be emphasized (i.e.
without passing through BC / NGO systems) to facilitate ease of information sharing, and to
increase the future sustainability of the network.