The project aims to encourage the young people to inform the public society on their own about actual democratic processes that are important to their own communities by using online media. After before being provided training on production of videos, the youth will now learn in the training how and where to publish these topics online in form of videoblogs. Youth online involvement should also increase their peers‘ interest in local democratic processes.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Spišské Podhradie
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
The informative process about democratic processes is important for increase the awareness and participaton in democratic society. However, we are still faced, especially among young Roma people, with the increase of mistrust and disinterest in democratic institutions and their processes. One important reason for this is their weak representation and participation in the public media. The young Roma don´t have any positive role models in journalism, blogging or news moderating and reporting about democratic processes from their Roma point view at a national, regional or local media level. Even though they get more access to online media in schools or community centers, they still don´t have skills to participate actively in the online forum.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
Online journalist Rudolf Sivý – http://www.sme.sk/redakcia/rudolf-sivy/
https://www.facebook.com/rudko.sivy?fref=ts
Video documentarist Adam Hanuljak – http://www.dogdocs.sk/?page_id=269
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
The participants will inform regularly about political meetings and decisions of local authorities, activism initiatives in their community, about local elections, ethnical and social conflicts between local citizens, violation and protection of human rights at their local level and current social and cultural events. The young people will produce journalistic material such as videoblogs, video-interviews, video-news, short reports and blogs and learn how to publish it via online media such as Youtube, Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter and Sme.sk (Slovak newspaper).
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established or plan to establish that will contribute to the success of the project.
Existing partnerships:1, Dogdocs : Informal documentary formation producing film and photography, theater records, promotional films, organizing workshops and one-minute films. They are aimed at developing skills for all ages and social groups. In cooperation with our organisation they produced several short movies together with young people from local communities – http://vimeo.com/dogdocs/videos
2, Print/online newspaper SME with its online portal Romovia.sme.sk. Our social workers inform their journalists about different topics from community, for example- presidential election: http://romovia.sme.sk/c/7137271/volby-pre-romov-akoby-neboli-v-osade-si-ich-nevsimli.html
3, Network of social workers working for our organization, who are in every day contact with the participants
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
During the project, a min. of 5 young people from each of the 4 micro-regions (min.15 participants) in Eastern Slovakia will participate in one 3-day training. The participants will gain new knowledge and skills in the field of the citizen journalism via online media. Organization People in need currently operates community centers in these 4-micro-regions, which are designed to work with the people from social excluded communities. Activities that take place in community centers are focused on the work with children and youth since 2004, so our organization have already built close relationship with the young people from communities, which can ensure their participation on the project. The training will take place in one of these community centers.
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
Young people, after beeing trained on video production in the previous projects, will learn how especially videoblogs can improve the community/citizen journalism. The youth will learn in the training how and with which media tool is good to publish videos online and what kind of journalistic text is appropriate, especially for the social and political topics they will inform about. The experienced journalist will introduce the different techniques, tools and forms in online media during the training that participants learn to successfully reach their primary focus group- their peers.
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
In organisation we have together min.10 computers, min. 3 video cameras, internet connection speed is cca. 11,00 Mbit/s in every community center, which are available for the training. In community center in Spišské Podhradie there is one large room with a internet connection, in which the training will take place.
What is your current relationship with the community with whom you plan to work? What makes you the most appropriate individual or organization to implement this project?
Through projects aimed at breaking down barriers, stereotypes and prejudices in the past, People in need (PiN) managed to work with the youth regularly in the community centers and mobilize them from socially excluded localities. Currently, many of these young people are better reflecting what is happening in their communities, cooperating daily with social workers from PiN, peers from majority and other local authorities. They are engaging in making proposals and solutions and are looking for opportunities to carry out their own intentions towards the development of communities and localities. Our long-term activities in community work were awarded by the Gypsy Spirit Slovakia in 2010.
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
One of the challenges will be to ensure that there is enough technical equipment (cameras) for all participants. In this project to avoid any problems, we will cooperate with our partner organisation Dogdocs for additional using of needed equipment for our training.
Another obstacle can be a lack of the participants’ interest on reporting about local democratic processes. To avoid this, we will inform all interested young people about the aim of project before the trainings. We prefer participants who have already completed previous trainings about video production and social processes and are motivated to do online media work.
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
There will be implemented one three-day workshops – focused on working with video-blogs, video-reports, journalistic text in online media focused on citizen topics. At least 15 trained young people. The own online-blog page will be established, where min. 6 articles for each locality will be published, min. 3 video- blogs per locality. The material will be also published on website, newsletter and social media channels of the organization. The best media outputs (videos, blog, interviews) will be published on our partner‘s online web portal www.romovia.sme.sk , which is the portal of national medium SME.
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
Activity 1.: Information and recruitment of participants in 4 micro-regions
June/July 2014
Activity 2: Training with online media journalist and project coordinator: young people gain new skills in online media communication and in reporting about democratic society processes as public life, activism and human rights protection, especially as videoblogs
August 2014
Activity 3: Production of online media outputs by the young people and their publishing on online media.
September 2014 to January 2015
Activity 4: Final evaluation meeting of the project
15-20 direct project participants and project coordinator will evaluate the success of implemented activities, the relevance of the information learned during the trainings and usefulness of the information for peer groups and for further work and the impact of media outputs on their local and national level.
February 2015
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
1. Funding for lector – 1 person x 12 hours / training (4 hours – Friday, 8 hours – Saturday) x 27$ / hour. / lector = 324$
2. Funding for project coordinator: 40 hours / project x 11$ / hour = 440$
3.Travel costs for lector– car: 1 person x 1 way = 80$
4. Travel costs for participants– bus: 15 persons x 1 way (10$) = 150$
5. Accomodation costs for participants (included expert and project coordinator) – person/night (20$) x 2 nights x 17 participants = 680$
6. Video camera = 500$
7. Refreshments during the training and final meeting – 1 meeting: 70$ /x 2 meetings = 140$
8. Office material for training and final meeting (paper, pens…) = 60$
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
We are expecting useful exchange of information about new citizen media tools like blogs and online video with Rising Voices for our young community media makers. We would also like to use your projects network, where we can share the knowledges with other communities and organisations and get inspired by them.
Contact name
romana.medvedova@peopleinneed.sk
Organization
Člověk v tísni o.p.s Slovensko/People In Need Slovakia
