When: 20-27 July 2012

Where: Ekocentre Paleta Oucmanice, Czech Republic

Who: Hnuti Brostosaurus (Czech Republic and YEE)

Activity type: Training course

Contact person: Tomas Protivinsky This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Project description:

The training course Media, Communication & Nature is intended for youth leaders, youth workers and volunteers from environmental and educational organizations to support them in increasing their impact through training communication skills with media and public. The training course adresses the needs of the youth environmental organizations to improve their competences in communication with public and media in order to increase the youth awareness about environmental problems.

The idea of the training course is based on the fact that one of the biggest environmental problem of our society is the general inability to solve problems effectively. The people has information mainly from media, however the most of information in media is simplified and often misrepresented. As the result, the public discussion concerning environmental topics are really confusing. The youth, as well as public in general have just superficial knowledge of the environmental issues and are not able to interpret the information correctly. Psychologists call the state of confussion cognitive dissonance and the easist way how to overcome it is to stop caring about the problem.

Environmental organizations has to put more emphasis on promotion and communication of environmental issues, it is necessary to enable people to understand the issues correctly. Moreover, badly prepared campaings could have negative impact on the general public. It is important to plan the promotion carefully and to be aware how people perceive our information.

It is the reason why we decided to focus the training course on media and communication of environmental issues. The training course will consist of four content pillars:

• Developing basic journalistic skills.
• Training in new media (social networks etc).
• Common difficulties in environmental communication.
• Skills of critical thinking.

Aim and objectives:

Aims:

• To increase participants' competences to communicate with media in better way and present their issues in more understandable way.

Objectives:

• To improve the promotional capacity of environmental NGOs.
• To show how communication with media is important for public awareness.
• To give youth leaders knowledge how to choose the right topic for the media.
• To train basic public relations and journalistic skills – writing articles, press reports, choosing title, preparing media digest, interviewing skills, working with media representatives.
• To train youth workers on how to use new media (internet, social networks, blogs).
• To show how ill-planned communication can undermine the raising of public awareness and the solving of environmental problems.
• To give the inspiration for promotional activities from other NGOs, to spread good practices of environmental communication.
• To enable participants to read and interpret media in better way, to develop skills of critical thinking and reading.

Participating organisations:

• Hnutí Brontosaurus, Czech Republic
• Youth and Environment Europe, Czech Republic
• Academic Section of Polish Land Lovers Society, Poland
• Aithria: Agro-Environmental Research and Action Team, Greece
• Alliance for Society Advancement, Georgia
• Deutscher Jugendbund für Naturbeobachtung, Germany
• Environmental center for Development Education and Networking, Albania
• Environmental Youth Club, Russian Federation
• Federation of Youth Clubs of Armenia, Armenia
• Kultúrne Centrum Aktivity, Slovakia
• Organizaçao para a Promoçao dos Ecoclubes, Portugal
• Stepanavan Youth Center, Armenia
• Young Researchers of Serbia - Voluntary Service of Serbia, Serbia

Photogallary from the Training Course:

• Media Communication and Nature

Participants opinions:

"Interesting experience was meeting with the members of environmental organizations before at least 40 years of age. Their unwavering commitment to work for the environment is noteworthy and provide the next generation. I liked brainstorming on new projects. First, bring a lot of fun and joy. A second for YEE they are useful for environment."
Dagmara - Poland

"In my opinion organization was very good. For a really short time we did a lot of things. I can say that I came back home with plenty of experience.Eko center “Paleta” was a success. When it comes to food, from the beginning I was not satisfied because I was supposed to eat just vegetarian food, but as the time went by  I got used to it. I liked snacks as well. I also liked morning activities!"

Jovana - Serbia

Funders: