Young People's Media Network in Europe and Central Asia (YPMN) - Europe and Central Asia

Connecting young media-makers and the organisations that work with and for them is YPMN's central strategy. This approach is based on the observation that there are hundreds of young people's media projects - mostly working in isolation - underway throughout the region. Also working separately are many NGOs, media organisations, and regional or international agencies supporting media efforts by young people. In this context, networking is used as a means to provide children and young people from grassroots youth media projects with tools and opportunities. The initiative is envisaged as a 'bottom-up' endeavour that reflects the needs and interests of the young network members. Direct and active participation of children and young people underlies the work of YPMN.

YPMN works both by providing a forum for youth media projects already in existence and by creating and supporting new opportunities. With regard to the former, some YPMN activities include:

• offering media opportunities to disadvantaged and marginalised youth
• helping young people connect by facilitating Internet access and highlighting activities designed to bridge the digital divide
• attracting resources to facilitate the training of young journalists
• fostering exchange visits and electronic information sharing between young people working with the media throughout the region
• offering opportunities for participants in the network to meet and share ideas, and contacts through workshops and other gatherings
• offering awards for outstanding media products by young people
• establishing a directory of media internship and employment opportunities and initiatives for and by young people.

Information and communication technologies are a key means of building and sustaining this network. Since mid-2002, YPMN has disseminated news and perspectives from the youth media sector in this region. This process draws on a project to map the region, which generated a database of projects from more than 40 countries. Two free email list servers - the youthful-media list and the MAGIC list -currently have more than 500 subscribers and feature an exchange of more than 100 messages per month (from the coordination office in Budapest as well as from youth media activists in their respective countries). A "blog" and archives are also posted online to facilitate information access and exchange.

In 2003, YPMN took over the maintenance of UNICEF's MAGIC website. MAGIC is a global portal designed for those involved in youth media - young media-makers, parents, teachers, journalists, and government officials. It showcases youth media projects, provides links to organisations that can help young people make their first steps in the media, and offers advice and resources on how to promote children in the media. Other features include news, a calendar, and a mailing list.

To cite a few examples of specific projects designed to create new opportunities, YPMN joined the European Cultural Foundation and the Sandberg Institute to launch the OneMinutesJr. project. Organisers train people aged 12-20 to produce their own 1-minute-long videos to be shown to a wider audience (e.g., in campaigns or on television). The workshops that took place throughout 2003 in Budapest, Tbilisi, Londonderry (with support from the BBC), and Berlin led up to the annual OneMinute Awards Festival in Amsterdam on November 16 2003. The network of OneMinute-makers also supported the launch of the Leave No Child Out campaign of the Regional Network for Children by producing 30 videos on topics such as social inclusion of disabled children, education, health, and drug prevention.

In January 2004, YPMN will launch the Young Media Fellows project in cooperation with the World Economic Forum at the Davos Summit. The project aims to bring together young journalists and experienced mediamakers in a mentoring relationship, with the hope that participants mutually benefit from each other's views and opinions.

Children, Youth, Rights, Media Development.

YPMN grew out of a process that began in 1996, when the Committee on the Rights of the Child held a theme day on children and the media. One of the recommendations was that a working group be up to explore developing a positive relationship between children and the media. In late 1998, the Norwegian Government and UNICEF responded to a request from this working group to identify examples of good practice, forge cooperative links, and produce resources. Against this background, UNICEF's Central and Eastern Europe, Commonwealth of Independent States and Baltic States Regional Office commissioned a study on youth and media in the region. One of the recommendations of this study, which is entitled "Young People and Media in Central and Eastern Europe, the CIS and Baltic States", was to support existing youth media with a network. YPMN was the result.