Over 200 youth in local communities have engaged with their local media, seeing first hand how news and information is gathered and produced, and getting the chance to make their own media products.

Over the past month IREX Europe has helped young people better connect with their local media, providing a training and learning opportunity for them in collaboration with local media, who in turn get to engage with young people helping their outreach to this important demographic.

For Angela Zaharova, from TV Elita the experience showed the youth already have some media skills: “I have discovered young people who can already shoot and edit a story”.

At least 50 multimedia productions will be created as a result of this collaboration between youth and local media as part of a small grants activity[1] under IREX Europe’s “Empowering Youth to Become Civic Actors" project funded by the EU.

TV Elita from Rezina, Expresul from Ungheni, Observatorul de Nord from Soroca, Bas TV from Basarabeasca, and Pro Media from Cimislia are all participating – running projects involving youth, local authorities and other interested community actors. The goal is to increase the quality and the quantity of local productions, generating increased trust and interaction between local communities, and in particular youth, and local media.

In May this year, a series of events were held bringing media, youth and local communities together: 

• Practical Media training sessions for youth (Pro Media TV Elita and Expresul)
• orientation meetings introducing youth to local media (TV Elita)
• public cafes for local youth (Expresul) working to define local issues of importance

Young participants also made their own video reports with mentoring at  Bas TV - https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=29f-fnEUWuk and Observatorul de Nord- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjDJuCuBX7s).

[1] http://irex-europe.fr/2018/05/09/moldovan-youth-working-with-local-media/