Youth Against Fake Web

Background According to European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), "six in ten news items shared on social media were not even read first by the user who shared them. Some 85% of Europeans see fake news as a problem in their own country, and 83% of them view it as a problem for democracy in general.” The term ‘fake news’ is very widely used today, but is often largely misused, or at least irresponsibly used. Calling something ‘fake news’ is vague and at times over-simplified. The term is used in many different ways and is defined differently by those who use it. Fake news can have many aims behind it, often with political or malicious intent. The partners who all work with youth felt a need for developing effective training of youth workers to support wider engagement of youth around issues associated with Fake News and Fake Web. Further, the partners were committed to building capacity within their own organisations for effective curriculum development supported by streamlined training processes for wide dissemination and engagement with their respective national, and international networks. Specifically, the partners wanted to engage these networks to advance understanding of the nature and impact of fake news on young people. Objectives The objectives were that the youth workers obtain and develop competences for train youth how to train youth to recognise fake news, fake web, scams,. The results were e-brochure YAFW with good practices examples and models for every-day work; trained workers; established the network against fake web on Facebook. The project activities were collection and selection of best practices; analyses of the bad practices. Training of trainers; local events for transfer of acquired competences nationally; dissemination events with involvement of end-users, stakeholders, public institutions, NGOs, SMEs, the whole community. The training materials were structured to encourage adoption through partner networks and enhance the replication of the training activities. The capacity built at partners will be used going forward to expand the impact of the project; the team also engage in a survey of global youth to assess the state of Fake Web and internet scamming. CIC also engaged with ICS (http://icsinstitute.org/) a UK Charity to promote the impact of the project and enhance the uptake; the ICS also issued certificates of participation to the trainees. Finally, we wanted to build the project partners into National Leaders on the subject. Implementation C 1 will be organized in UK online (3 days X 1 webinar) C 2 in North Macedonia. Fake profiles; Online scamming. (3 days) Training achieved and then roll out through networks over 150 young people and youth workers engaged. Grow a Facebook network of 5000+. 2 trainings: one in the UK (online) and one in North Macedonia with participation of 2 persons per partner. Total – 8 youth workers plus 2 local ones additionally from each hosting partner. After each training in each country training of at least 15 local youth worker – 4 x 2=8 x 15=120 youth workers. Create a replicable framework. with partners across the EU and beyond, capacity has been built at partners to engage with effective training for Fake web, fake news, internet scams, etc. Further, youth workers were trained to use online training tools, Zoom, and use Google Jamboards to ensure that the training can effectively be delivered using remote tools. This has allowed for a much wider reach by the proeject. Achievements 20 Youth workers trained in C1 and C2, material developed to support wider engagement and to build youth workers capacity across partners networks. Development of a template to promote roll out; Facebook (5,328 people likes) plus 5,403 people following the YAFW Facebook page; we have also created a basecamp of 59 youth workers who are presently planning their own delivery, with the Mali partner presently translating materials into French to roll out across the Francophone world. The project has built a very robust network and have brought the concept of Fake news into focus for organisations engage in youth work. Further, the resources , are available at YAFW (www.yafw.org) and the project wider associate partners are being supported to replicate, the lead youth trainer (Alex Sloane) is delivering further training for wider partnership base. Finally, the project will be adopted by ICS and DICE Consortium and feed into their international activities to ensure the programme is sustainable. Through the Malian project the team will develop localisation templates to support translation across the wider partnership.