Youth Participation In Mass Media PART- III

How can this be achieved?
The first step would be to assure our newsletter reach as many people as possible, so that we could raise attention upon our group “Article 2” and our mission. This newsletter should be read by young people as well as adults working in key-fields like education ,mass-media ,advocacy, NGO`s and big organizations like UN and UNICEF .We need to contact important people and ask artistic/literary personalities for their help. We can also send our newsletter to big firms as we might need their support, too. Our newsletter needs to be different from other youth publications; we need to focus on the “take action” aspect so that people could see that we intent and we know how to make a difference.
The second step would be to contact other youth groups and organizations and work together for achieving our goal of “youth participation in mass-media”. We shall collaborate and coordinate our actions as for major changes are always needed many people. So we shall contact other youth groups, explain them our idea and start militating together for youth’s right to express themselves in the media.
The third step and the most important is to launch simultaneously our campaign in all the countries, so that we could start a global movement for “youth participation”. In order to achieve this we shall write a press release and send it to all the media (TV, newspapers, radio, etc) .Luckily, nowadays there are a lot of services for sending official statements to the press through internet or fax, which distribute press releases to thousands of subscribed Medias. In this press-release we shall introduce ourselves as a group of young activists and express our desire to let young people participate in the media in order to contribute for making this world a better place.
The last step is to raise the authorities’ interest and determine that they pass a “youth-participation” law or give any other legal frame to our initiative. This can be achieved if we write letters to them and if we organize spectacles, meetings, or other events that could determine the public and the governors recognize the importance of youth-participation in mass-media. (Of course, in order to make this possible our group needs to grow a lot, to become a world youth force, otherwise we won’t have the power to make our voices heard).
We need to be well-trained!Like every Mass-media professional, young people need to learn how to work in this field in order to be capable to participate and convince the public to listen to their voices. We must learn the structure of an article so we can write it right, know what questions we are supposed to ask and how we should ask them in an interview, learn how to conduct a TV program , how to captivate the whole audience or raise the public’s interest on a certain theme. Young people should be allowed to join mass-media teams already working on certain social projects and after obtaining enough knowledgeabout communication matters, they should receive the permission to make themselves a report. This project, would it be newspaper reportage, a short movieor a radio debate, can prove the world what they have learned and would show other young people that helping others is actually a very exciting and rewarding experience!Young people and artArt contests are a great opportunity for young people to express themselves, prove their talents and determine a change.
*Mass-media should promote contests on social themes, in order to raise awareness or change people’s attitudes and reactions. For example:
-essay contest on “Ending discrimination”
-drawing contest on “Peace and solidarity”
-music for a campaign “Against indifference”
*The contests `s winners will benefit by free publicity and support for their careers if, in exchange, they will chose to support a cause, start a campaign ,get involved in humanitarian projects, etc.
*In the case of performing arts (like dance, music, acting) the competitions can become real shows , opened to the public of all ages. If these spectacles would be announced and advertised by mass-media, they would be a great fund-raising opportunity for NGO`s.
*The first step for a united society is that the mass-media encourage participating at these contests youth coming from any social environment, of any race or religion, disabled or not, so that the world could understand that talent is universal.

Ailen Laura Rodríguez, Argentina
Grosu Luciana, Romania