Building podcast and media creation skills for peace building and democracy

ended

Disadvantaged young people and young people that have been affected by conflicts are very frequently excluded from the media and they are not able to make their voice heard. This influences significantly their civic engagement and democratic participation as well as the peace building process in areas that have experienced conflict. On the other hand, podcasts is a means of communication and expression that is becoming increasingly popular, it is low-cost to create and easy to be promoted. However, podcasts have not been used until now in youth work as a means to increase the democratic participation of young people. PODJECT is aiming to achieve this goal by providing young people with the capacities and skills to create their own podcasts, by escorting them through the whole process of podcast creation; from looking to get inspired and creative in order to conceive the ideas and thematics of the podcasts, to actually recording, editing, and promoting their podcast among their peers, with the help of PODium, the podcast platform that the project will create. This will be achieved also through the empowerment of youth workers and the development of their skills so that they can assist the disadvantaged young people in the process. PODJECT is first going to develop a methodology and training materials on how podcasts can be used as tool for civic engagement and then it is going to organize training seminars for youth workers (both online in synchronous (webinar) form, and asynchronous (e-learning materials), and face to face (transnational trainings). It is also going to develop a platform (PODium) where the podcasts developed by the young people in cooperation with the trained youth workers are going to be posted. This platform will be the hub for all trainees, through which they will be able to save and promote their created podcasts.