Youth on air- IO2
Within the project “YOUth on AIR – developing active participation and intercultural dialogue among youth through online media tools”, members of the Center for Social Innovations Centrifuge had the opportunity to get behind the microphones and see what it’s like when youth workers become creators of radio shows. By doing this we discovered the potential that this medium has to reach our largest target group – young people, and within this group to reach out to those who are marginalized or face geographical, socio-economic or difficulties of other kinds. The overall aim of the project was to build the capacities of 5 NGOs from 4 European countries to use digital radio in their work. Funded by the EU Erasmus + program of the EU, this project brought together civil society organizations from Belgium, Northern Macedonia, Great Britain and Serbia, which came together to learn how to use radio waves to plunge into topics that are really important to their target groups.
The project produced the “Toolkit – Radio for quality Youth work” which, in addition to the online training attended by partners’ participants, served as a basis for developing youth workers’ competencies for creating a series of shows “Around Europe in 60 minutes”, 2 of which were recorded by our members. The topic of the first show was Mental Health, while the topic of the second show was Youth Mobility. During the first episode, we tried to explore what the concept of mental health encompasses; especially in these pandemic times when experts are warning that in parallel with the coronavirus pandemic, a mental health crisis is spreading that should be taken as seriously as containing the spread of the virus. We took special interest in how young people cope with the challenges that life has brought their way at these difficult times. We don’t seem to have very many opportunities to talk openly about mental health in public. We believe that destigmatizing honest conversations about mental health is crucial, so we wondered what we could do to support each other in these difficult times. During the second episode, we talked about Youth Mobility. During this episode, we tried to share with the listeners some of our experiences from various events that involved mobility. In addition to the members of Centrifuge, our guests as well as our fellow citizens spoke about this topic. If you want to learn more about different views on the concept of Mental Health or if you want to learn more about what Mobility is and hear more about different opportunities for mobility, listen to our shows at the following link.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBkjHwKbPKCrLRSml8m-mw2J5hT9CgNRi
We would like to thank everyone who shared with us their thoughts and knowledge about Mental Health and Youth Mobility. We owe a huge debt of gratitude for the realization of these shows to Galaxy FM radio, in whose studio we had the opportunity to record the shows and which with 89.3MH sends great music and great energy to our fellow citizens. On this occasion, we presented to these experienced radio practitioners the Toolkit developed within the project, thus broadening their horizons regarding involving young people in the creation of radio content. We would also like to thank the performers from our town who allowed us to bring our radio shows to life with their rhythms.
