Aletta Shikololo

The National Youth Council (NYC) in partnership with Unesco and Namibia National Commission with support from the Japanese government, last week officially launched the Media and Information Literacy (MIL) for Youth Civic Engagement in Namibia.

The project aims to engage youth-led organisations and youth, in general, to take part in MIL workshops, webinars, and online training to navigate the digitalised information ecosystem.

Speaking to Youth Corner, NYC head of corporate communication and marketing, Brian Prince, said the vision of the project is to enable youth to make informed decisions, become actively involved in wide-ranging societal affairs, and be change-makers in their professional fields.

“The programme is aimed to empower youth from all over Namibia with knowledge and capacities on media and information literacy. It is focused on disinformation, online hate speech, mal-information, misinformation, and media ethics,” said Prince.

The NYC already concluded the training of 13 facilitators, who will be expected to train the target audience of 1 000 young people by December 2021.

According to Unesco information officer Yang Wang, the new project is a lifelong learning tool for youth to assess and verify, feed and receive messages on social media platforms and the internet.

“Seeking, interacting, and sharing information online also implies privacy issues, which is closely associated with the transparency of internet companies regarding the collection of data and algorithm; education on digital citizenship is thus another vital component of media and information literacy,” she said.

NYC is urging those who are interested in joining the project to be on the lookout on their numerous social media platforms as they open the applications.

“To those that applied, please keep your phone close to you as we will be contacting you very soon,” it said.

- ashikololo@nepc.com.na