The Fundació Catalunya Voluntària has organized, from February 16 to 21 2022, the international training course ‘Mainstreaming Media Literacy and Thinking Competences’, an activity dedicated to sharing educational tools so that 5 youth organizations from 5 countries help their teams and young people with those who work to develop their media literacy and thinking skills. Skills that, despite their enormous value for understanding reality, are not necessarily part of the educational content of the activities they carry out, so that both competencies are integrated naturally as part of the capacities of the respective teams, due to their close link with their programs and activities.
In the course we have exchanged and created tools that we can use in the organization of new activities on both competences, which the 5 entities are going to carry out in each country in the coming months, to help young people understand and interpret reality with the necessary defenses to detect propaganda, false news and speeches of hate, as a strategy to strengthen their sense of citizenship, issues that in the current war context in Europe are of dramatic relevance.
These activities will serve to create a manual that, once published, can encourage many other entities to organize similar activities on both competitions.
Throughout an intense program of activities we have carried out games, workshops and presentations. One of the most valued activities has been the workshop dedicated to analyzing subtle manipulation techniques (facilitated by Lorenzo, part of the Portuguese team).
The FCV, for its part, proposed 3 new activities on thinking skills: reflection activity based on peer-to-peer conversations; challenge to create an educational activity using the techniques of deliberate creative thinking, and to promote it using humor, provocation and poetry.
These activities will serve to create a manual that, once published, can encourage many other entities to organize similar activities on both competences.
18 people have participated in the course, more than half of them workers in the 5 entities, partners, including leaders of 3 of them. It has been a real luxury to have a team of trainers with the experience and background of Miguel, Elemér, Miriam and Lluc, representatives of the Amarante Youth Center and the NGOs Co-Efficient-EKE, United Societies of Balkans and FCV, respectively, as well as with those responsible for the Italian partner organization Associazione InformaGiovani, incorporated into the project days before the start of the course, due to the change in the Italian partner organization.
The course, held in Vilanova i la Geltrú (Barcelona), has allowed us to analyze the relevant relationship with other key competencies (digital, communication, creativity) and acquire new perspectives and pedagogical approaches, based on the experiences and ways of approaching both competencies by each organization.
It is the first learning activity for youth workers that the FCV has hosted in the framework of the long-term project for the innovation and exchange of good practices ‘Mainstreaming Media Literacy and Thinking Competences in Youth Work’, which the FCV coordinates, thanks to the support of the Erasmus+ program of the European Commission and the Spanish national agency.
For more information on the next project activities, do not hesitate to send an email to projectes@catalunyavoluntaria.cat