Description
Negative stereotypes and myths play critical role in rise of discrimination, and media has enormous influence in refueling or, on the contrary, diffusing those stereotypes. Another decisive factor is empathising – we can easily hate what we don‘t understand, and vice versa. NSII is a youth driven organization, descended from campaign „All Different – All Equal“ thus it has both unique competence in involvement of youth and rich experience of work with media. Project objective – develop capacity of NSII as a public policy NGO through support to administrative capacity building, strategic programme planning and diversification of funds, and promote human rights through awareness raising campaign and NGO/Media partnership. Project shall contribute to change of vulnerable groups portrayal in media through capacity building of NSII Journalist Training Programme and implementation of investigative journalism with monitoring and feed-back. No Hate Speech Campaign (NSII is a National Coordinator) shall include diverse youth-driven and youth-aimed activities, live and online. NSII shall fundamentally revise it‘s programming and fundraising strategies.
Summary of project results
Stereotypes, myths and prejudice towards vulnerable groups of the society often inspire discrimination and hate speech that turn into hate crimes too frequently. Low level of human rights awareness among all stakeholders does not allow responding to the situation adequately. While human rights NGOs are the most active in raising discrimination and hate speech/crime issues, public institutions and the society at large often remain passive or their reaction is often delayed and therefore ineffective. Despite the increasing number of human rights NGOs their professional and organizational capacity remains low and in need of development of various skills (suchlike communication, publicity, storytelling, advocacy, legal knowledge, etc.). As a response to this situation project promoter has developed a project that could allow both material and expert capacity to be developed as well as awareness of the society and relevant stakeholders increased. The goal of the project was to foster development of civil society by strengthening and expanding the activities of NSII aimed at education and awareness raising of human rights, fostering democracy and promoting active participation in tackling discrimination. Project promoter has completed the following tasks and activities to achieve the abovementioned goal: 1. Changing the portrayal of the vulnerable groups in the media: a) strengthened and expanded the team and technical basis for the journalists education program; b) implemented the model of the human rights representation in the media by realizing the journalistic investigations and ensuring monitoring of media and feedback; c) provided space for continuity of the collaboration between media and NGOs in the journalistic investigations. 2. Raising awareness of human rights among the youth: a) strengthened and expanded the Living Library program. 3. Implementing the No Hate Speech campaign: a) formed and coordinated national committee to draw the attention of governmental agencies on the importance of the human rights education; b) applied suggestive models and attractive tools to promote human rights activism; c) involved youth in the activities preventing hate speech and promoting human rights. 4. Ensuring sustainability of NSII activities: a) strengthened professional capacity and strategic planning skills; b) strengthened material basis of the organization; c) explored and tested various fundraising opportunities.
Summary of bilateral results
Nordland University contributed to the planning, implementation and evaluation phase of the project. The partner has sent journalist to NGOs’ and journalists partnership creation workshop. The special role of it – to ensure project’s visibility in Norway, inform about the possibility to participate in virtual platform called Media4Change.co and exchange experience in the fields of Media and human rights. Partner has registered to the platform mentioned before and published on university intranet best practice of National Institute for Social Integration. Project promoter has invited a group of representatives of Nordland University to participate in one of the workshops organized for journalists. The date of this workshop was 25th-28th of September and it was a part of the contest of investigative journalism project in Lithuania. On 25th of July Media4change announced a contest for professional and young journalists to carry out investigations on the topics of human rights or corruption. The aim of this contest was to promote and maintain the tradition of investigative journalism. Furthermore, Media4change cooperates with NGOs which can offer topics for journalists. Also they have the panel of commission (professional & experienced journalists, media experts, scholars) which is responsible for selection of candidates and consultations for those, who might need it. On September (25th-28th) there was a workshop, which was related to this contest. Media4change organized this workshop on behalf of National Institute for Social Integration for journalists, who had picked human rights topic. Media experts and human rights professionals were gathered to help journalists to elaborate their topics, hypothesis and which way to follow in order to reach a success. The plan was to make workshop and interactive space for journalists in order to establish connections and to work on their plans of their investigations. Nordland University has contributed to the visibility of the project: spread our organization good practice and contributed to methodology for the journalists ”How to recognize hate speech”. Partner has published on university intranet about Media4Change and journalism concerning Human Rights. This news were for the students in journalism who are going to finish their bachelor. This information were used as a resource-base for the students that are going to work with issues such as human rights and vulnerable groups in the society.