On November 9-11, 2015, the Albanian Organization of the Order of Malta participated in the kick off meeting of “Multimedia multipliers from margins”. This is a new project of Erasmus+, where Malteser Albania is one of the partners. The Malteser youth is in the priority of the oOrganization, thus it empowers the youth participation in several fields, such as: education, humanitarian and voluntary work, etc.
Two staff members of the Albanian Organization of the Order of Malta participated in this first meeting of representatives and decision makers of project partners.There are 12 European countries partners in this project: BIT, Serbia; APIS, Slovenia; TOG, Turkey; BRF, Latvia; Multisportloisirs, France; InsideOut, Northern Ireland; Ilidih, Portugal; Urbana mladez, Croatia; AIM, Italy; Carousel, Romania; Malteser, Albania; Proni, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The project “Multimedia multipliers from margins” is advanced form of citizens’ journalism, which aims to empower and represent the views of vulnerable groups, but at the same time represents innovative model of training tools for youth workers. While mainstream media (print, TV, radio), struggles and loses the fight with on-line media, media literate and skilled reporters coming from marginalized communities can offer their knowledge and expertise, stories with different narratives and more personal understanding of the issues.
The project will work with youth workers who will, once they receive the training in new media and technologies, act as multipliers in their communities. It expects from them to transfer their knowledge to interested representatives from diverse marginalized communities, and build their competences in using photo/video/ict to raise their visibility. The project goal is to contribute to the prevention of discrimination by encouraging equal representation in public sphere, through creation and distribution of participatory video, photo journalism for inclusion and integration. The long term objectives of the project are to increase understanding of social reality of marginalized groups and to develop new skills among youth workers on different techniques of participatory video making and photo journalism as a way to give contributions from margins, to the mainstream media.