Promoting Media literacy in Palestine (2015-2022)
The Kvs Foundation has run MFA-funded media literacy projects in Palestine since 2015. This media literacy programme supports the building of Palestinian civil society by strengthening media literacy and its training by producing teaching materials. The aim of the program is to promote the right of the people in the region to information, and to strengthen the conditions for civil society and democracy.
The first project in the area offered media education workshops for media students and professionals and the second extended media literacy education to citizens living in vulnerable areas and refugee camps. In the ongoing project, the target group are NGO workers.
In the courses organized across the West Bank and through distance learning in Gaza, topics such as social media, fact-checking, the ethics of journalism and the basics of the self-regulatory system, as well as online safety and security are covered. Finnish media professionals and students have worked as volunteer trainers alongside the local trainers trained during the projects.
In 2015-2016, a total of 272 media professionals and communicators working in organizations and public administration participated in 15 training modules, with some participants taking part in more than one module. Between 2019 and 2020, a total of 80 active citizens were trained. All in all, over 30 Palestinians and 18 Finns have received Training of Trainers (ToT) and some of them have worked as volunteer trainers in the media literacy courses of the project.
The local partners are the Media Development Center from the University of Birzeit and the Institute for Community Partnership from the University of Bethlehem.
Current
The ongoing project will firstly train 12 journalists and teachers to work as media literacy trainers. Secondly, three ‘Training Media Literacy’ courses around West Bank target trainers, youth workers, community leaders working with youth, women and other vulnerable groups in in West Bank. Training of Trainers and all ‘Training Media Literacy’ courses will be conducted through hybrid learning.
Training of trainers course on Media Literacy in November 2021 – January 2022. More information and instructions to apply here (in Arabic).
Publications
The following publications have been produced under the program:
Media Literacy for Adults (edited by Karoliina Knuuti, 2020), an adult media literacy guide, published in English (ISBN 978-951-9140-74-2) and in Arabic electronically and in print. The book can be read and downloaded in pdf format at mediaguide.fi.
Media Literacy Course Curriculum (edited by Anne Tastula, 2020), a guide for organizing an adult media literacy course. The guide can be downloaded in pdf format from mediaguide.fi.