Delivered as a pro bono project by all the facilitators / partners (see sidebar), the Pacific Youth project enabled young leaders from Papua New Guinea and Tonga to participate in a five week online social media course with the aims to:
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give participants an understanding of online platforms and technology for use with young people and in their own professional development
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enable and empower through a supportive process of practical and immersive learning approaches
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have fun.
All course content is available under the Creative Commons license which enables other organisations and young people to participate in the course themselves, remix or embellish upon it (as long as they provide us with credit/link).
THE PROCESS
Every week a webpage was created introducing the topic with the following: a brief 'lecture' using SlideShare, links and cited/embedded examples plus downloadable pdf's containing the weeks missions.
WELCOME
Introducing the project and timetable.
WEEK ONE | New Media Literacy (delivered by Antonio)
Focussing on the techniques of communication by learning how to read media messages, which will help us understand how to better communicate our ideas when we create our own media (Wednesday 13th February).
WEEK TWO | Digital Stories (delivered by DK)
Exploring the different ways to tell a story online (Wednesday 20th February).
WEEK THREE | BREAK
A chance to catch up (Wednesday 27th February).
WEEK FOUR | Vodcasting (delivered by Chris)
Video time (Wednesday 5th March).
WEEK FIVE | Social Networking (delivered by Mark)
Examining some of the available social networks and their differing functionalities and capabilities (Wednesday 12th March).
WEEK SIX | Other Online Platforms/Tools (delivered by DK)
An exploration of new online platforms/terminology/formats to utilise in your project work and development. Everything highlighted will be free to access and use (Wednesday 26th March).
On the Friday of every week all the facilitators of that weeks course and participants met in a *private online chat hosted by Youth Action for Change. This gave everyone an opportunity to meet and talk about their progess, ask any questions or share insights.
* Due to the time difference (Papua New Guinea being +10 hours ahead and Tonga +13 hours ahead GMT) the online support chats took place at 5–6pm in Papua New Guinea and 8–9pm in Tonga (7–8am GMT) on each Friday following the release of that weeks course.
A REVIEW
In true social media style a short film review from the facilitators can be viewed below:
FEEDBACK
I think that the course was one of the best organised and delivered courses we offered to date. I have been watching closely what the participants did the activities they completed, and I am really happy and totally satisfied with the outcomes!
Selene Biffi, Youth Action for Change
MediaSnackers and youth action for change have built an innovative solution addressing the pacific's great need for more youth focused media and delivered it effectively through online workshops.
Shasheen Jayaweera, co-founder Pacifika Youth
As a young Tongan and coordinator of ON THE SPOT I feel very fortunate to have participated in such a fantastic online media training course. We totally enjoyed all the media snacks served to us and the creative ways they were presented. The team of facilitators—Mark, Chris, Antonio and DK—really knew the knitty gritty of what they were sharing with us and were able to answer all our questions with wisdom and encouragement.
Topics were presented in a logical order that ensured we were confidant at each stage of the journey and ready to snack on new tasty bits.
From ON THE SPOT and myself MALO AUPITO (big thanks) to everyone who was a part of this much needed and very satisfying, tasty, pot luck meal.
Ebonie Fifita, Tonga Coordinator
I would like to start of my saying that the media training provide was very useful. Young people are all into social networking and this media training provided by MediaSnackers and Youth Action have further fuel their desire to be creative and to stay connected with friends from the region and the world. These young people have not just learnt something valuable but they will now apply their skills practically. Yu Tok Org have made arrangement with the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) for us to take over their Campus FM. So these youths who where trained by DK and Co will now be going on live on radio and writing interesting stories for thier blog. The Radio station was launched on friday and also we have a community TV station to go. I have just bought a 25 watt TV transmitter so we going have to start on that next week. These youths will also work to create short informations for our community TV station. I'm so excited!!!
Rex Paura, Papua New Guinea Coordinator
The content generated from the courses is very impressive and a good indicator of what youth are capable of. The committment from the participants and the facilitators towards the program (even whilst obstacles arose) has made it very successful and effective.
Youth Action for Change and MediaSnackers have created a ripple for change in the pacific youth community; I am looking forward to the future endeavours of youth in the pacific through media.
Courtney Seeto, Co-Director of Pacifika Youth
The pacrtcipants were also asked to give feedback on each of their blogs (see sidebar).
THANKS
Thanks: Selene for approaching MediaSnackers in the first instance, Shish, Courtney, Rex and Ebonie for coordinating all the youth participants and Antonio, Chris and Mark for devising/delivering their weeks.
Thanks also to the nice people at Animoto for giving some freebies.
And last but by no means least, thank you to all the Pacific Youth participants for their time, energy and enthusiasm. We hope to meet you all one day but for now, keep exploring and using social media.
MAP
Giving you an idea of where everyone is:
CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE
Pacific Youth by MediaSnackers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Related blog posts: The Launch, The Start, An Update and Ends.