On the 15th of June, the project “Improving Media Literacy In Macedonia” was kicked off by a two-day ‘train-the-trainer’ conference. This project, which is sponsored by the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands through the MATRA program, aims to elevate the knowledge of the youth for the role and the function of the media in democratic societies, in order to be able to critically approach them, to analyze them and evaluate media content and messages at all the different types of media, which will lead them to be more engaged in the democratic processes. The concept media literacy is designed to become a part of the educational programs of the subjects Sociology in secondary school, and Civil Society in primary school. 

Media Literacy is defined as a capability for efficient communication of information and knowledge through the media. Because of that, media literacy is an integral part of the efficient social transformation and helps in engaging the public sector in the social and democratic processes. 

The project will be implemented by the Macedonian Institute for Media (MIM), the Institute for Democracy “Societas Civilis” (IDSCS) in cooperation with the European Journalism Center (EJC) from the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Ministry for Education and Science in Macedonia.

During the kick-off conference, local experts from MIM and IDSCS were provided with a training by the Dutch expert Chris van Hall, “Krant in de Klas” (Foundation Newspapers in Education, NL). This training was a workshop on Media Literacy and provided the local experts with skills that will enable them to transfer knowledge to 1100 teachers(1000 from primary and 100 from secondary schools), which will teach the youth for media literacy. Creating a web-site, organizing a round table at which local and foreign experts will be invited, and publishing literature for media literacy is also planned within the project.

A Press conference was held on the 17th of June. Mr. Pero Stojanovski, Minister for Education and Science of Republic of Macedonia; H.E Ms. Simone Filippini, Dutch Ambassador to Republic of Macedonia; Mr. Josh LaPorte, Projects Executive at the European Journalism Center and Mr. Marko Trosanovski, media expert at IDSCS were speakers at the press conference organized by MIM.  

The Dutch Ambassador, Simone Filippini talked about the importance of the media literacy and how it affects the children, since they’re the future of every society and raising them to persons that will debate for the problems and will have clear and critical attitude towards them is essential.