Solomon Island Youth Get Media-Savvy.

The workshop has been co-ordinated and developed by CYPSP’s Media Intern Tessa Johnstone who worked with 16 local youth development and media volunteers to deliver the activities.

Just over 50 young people between 15 and 29 attended the workshop. The first day was spent drawing out some the youth and community issues the participants wanted to focus on – HIV and AIDS, unemployment, access to education, education quality, corruption in government, logging, child abuse and children’s rights were top of the list. On the second day the participants worked with groups of media volunteers who taught them some basic media skills and then helped them to produce a piece of media on the issues they were concerned with.

“We got really great feedback from the participants and most just asked that it could have been longer,” says organiser Tessa Johnstone.

“For the volunteers I think it was a great learning opportunity – it can be an intimidating task to teach young people sometimes, and the volunteers here were very brave to take on the challenge. The participants really enjoying having professionals come in and teach them in a hands-on way.”

The experience and learning from the workshop will now be written up and put out to other youth workers in the Pacific to adapt for their own contexts. If you’d like to receive a copy please contact pacificyouthvoices@gmail.com.