Global Media And Information Literacy Week 2021

Global Media and Information Literacy Week, commemorated annually, is a major occasion for stakeholders to review and celebrate the progress achieved towards “Media and Information Literacy for All”. Global Media and Information Literacy Week 2021, hosted by South Africa, will take place from 24-30 October 2021.

The Youth Café is thrilled to promote the 2021 Global Media and Information Literacy week, that aims to harness Media and Information Literacy for the post-pandemic public good. This would be done by taking advantage of the support given by the United Nations General Assembly to promote the Global MIL week by mobilizing additional stakeholders to advance public good information.

It would also additionally involve more UN actors, member states, media and digital communications companies, and actors in the health, media, and culture sectors, as well as public and civil society, urging them to pay attention to the need of sufficient resources for MIL policies in the development and sharing of knowledge and implementation programmes.

The Global MIL week also aims to further publish key knowledge resources that can help to support and better understand MIL trends and curriculum implementation while moving forward with the Windhoek+30 Declaration and implementing its MIL-related recommendations. 

While COVID-19 demonstrates how lies can cost lives, the challenges of misleading and hateful expressions also extend far beyond our identity, our sense of humanitarian solidarity and peace, and our democratic systems and advances in human rights and sustainable development.

The Youth Café, through its thematic area in education, skills and technology works to create opportunities for young people to develop skills and competences including numeracy and literacy, equipped with soft skills such as critical thinking, communication skills, adaptability and subsequently digital and media literacy skills for easy navigation of social media tools and proper absorption of online information with the ability to identify facts from misinformation and disinformation.

The Global Media and Information Literacy theme will be ‘Hack Media and Information Literacy for Better Futures’. In order to enhance freedom of expression, counter hate speech and the right to information, the Global MIL week has five sub-themes that will inform the activities and sessions for the week, as well as the Feature Conference and Youth Forum. 

These sub-themes are: 1) Positioning media and information literacy in the post-pandemic world, 2) Enhancing cooperation among stakeholders to sustain media and information literacy development, 3) Promoting the second edition of UNESCO’s Media and Information Literacy Curriculum for Educators and Learners, 4) Increasing funding opportunities, and 5) Advancing media and information literacy research and knowledge.

These sub-themes inform the activities and sessions for the Week, as well as the Feature Conference and Youth Forum. Together they aim to ensure tangible advances in the role of media and information literacy to uphold the vision of information as a public good, as the world slowly begins to move towards a new post-COVID normal.

As members of the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Alliance, The Youth Café is calling partners all over the world to promote Global Media and Information Literacy Week by organizing and registering events/activities online or offline. Together with its Feature Events, Global Media and Information Literacy Week links up local events around the world to promote Media and Information Literacy connections across disciplines, professions and borders.

The highlights of this year’s Global MIL Week will include the traditional feature events, namely the Feature Conference and Youth Agenda Forum, which will take place online and gather policy makers, experts, practitioners, researchers, international organizations, NGOs, and private sector organizations from around the globe.

The Youth Forum will focus on the agenda of ‘Media and Information Literate Youth for the Public Good’. The forum aims to emphasize the importance of guaranteeing youth's involvement in MIL programs and initiatives and to engage youth as leaders and peer educators in the development and dissemination of MIL knowledge and resources. 

UNESCO seeks to equip young people with literacy skills in media and information to improve their ability to access, monitor, and use technology effectively. In this context, the Global Media and Information Literacy Youth Hackathon will offer youth and youth organizations around the world an occasion to contribute in a meaningful way to the production of innovative MIL learning.

Invited  participants include  youth from local schools, universities, youth centers and youth organisations as well as young leaders across the globe.  During the Global MIL Week Youth Agenda Forum, the winning teams and the results of the Hackathon will be presented. 

Therefore, a call will be made to stimulate internationally relevant and related ideas and programs. Indeed, the 2021 Global Media and Information Literacy Week can promote the argument that to defend and uphold the vision of information as a public good, media and literacy must be expanded, and that media and information literacy contribute to the public interest.

The Youth Café works with young men and women around Africa as a trailblazer in advancing youth-led approaches toward achieving sustainable development, social equity, innovative solutions, community resilience and transformative change.

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