ICT as a Tool for Young Voices

The aim of “ICT as a Tool for Young Voices” program is to promote the involvement of young people in the development of their communities in Armenia, as well as to assist them in developing their skills to reveal the issues and needs of their communities, and finding solutions to the issues. The project is also a great way for the participants to improve their knowledge in ICT and social media for the benefit of their communities.   

The project resulted in the following:

1. The total number of project participants is 317 (174 girls and 143 boys), who all come from 10 regions of Armenia and Yerevan. The age of participants is between 14 and 30 years old.

In frames of the program they have a chance to improve their skills and knowledge in IT and journalism. They share their investigations, interviews, suggestions, find out and reveal the community, write about it in their blogs and publish in social networks.

1. To increase the youth employment rate in communities 15 young people in each of the selected 10 communities regularly hold discussions, collect materials about upcoming events and important issues in their communities. They also organize online discussions with young people from other communities based in other regions. All these initiatives contribute to revealing the public needs and looking for the ways to solve them.
2. Raised the level of youth self-confidence and self-consciousness, especially in regards with their communities.
3. Our beneficiaries have improved their knowledge in IT and journalism. To increase the effectiveness of the work we have also distributed netbooks to the groups in the communities. One of the most important project achievements is the cooperation between the beneficiaries in Yerevan and the distant communities. Back in May we have organized a meeting in Noyan Tapan media center, which hosted 30 beneficiaries from 10 regions. During the meeting they presented their progress on the projects, shared their experience with each others and suggested new ideas for further cooperation.  

One of the participants, Astghik , who is the team leader of working group in Ararat region presented the project of the team.

“Hello, I am Astghik from Ararat region. I am one of the participants of “ICT as a Tool for Young Voices” project. In the frame of the project our team has organized number of trainings, seminars, meetings and discussions to find out the ways of making our community a better place. Samvel Martirosyan, a very well-known journalist and blogger in Armenia held a series of workshops for us and shared lots of tips and practical advices on IT usage and journalism. In the result I have started my own blog and the blog of our regional team. 

Thanks to the project I got to know many young people from other regions, and we started helping each other, sharing ideas and became friends. This is one of the ways to make our projects more effective.
I was also very happy to have a chance to share my knowledge and skills on IT, effective usage of computers with other young people, who unfortunately didn’t have the opportunity to join the training sessions.

It is absolutely necessary to continue the implementation of this project as it helps us to develop and improve our work for the benefit of our communities!

I’d like to thank everyone who has ever supported our project and believed in us, and the GlobalGiving for the chance to show our work and spread a word about our success.”  

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