Informed, Misinformed or Deformed!

Teenz Global Foundation organized her 3^rd Youth Workshop on September 8, 2016, to mark the International Literacy Day, the theme was �Information Literacy: 21^st Century Literacy Skills�. Caleb Adebayo, a fresh graduate of Law School, who was also a participant, wrote a report about it, and we decided to upload his report on our blog.

 �The 3^rdTeenz Global Workshop held at the Barack Obama American Corner on the 8^thof September 2016. The workshop was to mark the annual world literacy day.

The event started kicked off with Mrs. Rita Ezenwa-Okoro founder of Street Project Foundation, a Mandela Washington Fellow and communications expert and consultant introducing us to media information and literacy. Rita began with an icebreaker where each person got to talk about him or herself in short simple sentences. Soon all the participants had bonded and gotten to know much about each other.

Rita went on to play the whispering game with the participants where one message was told to the first participant and he had to whisper it to the next and the next person had to do the same thing until the last one. At the end of the whispering game, the message had changed. Rita pointed out from this that various lessons can be learned from the exercise. She pointed out that information could be distorted, wrongly perceived, mistaken or changed as it passes from hand to hand, or from mouth to mouth. She also pointed out that certain things like the message, the sender, the receiver and the channel were constant features of any communication, and that although the message, channel, sender or receiver may change, they must always be present in communication. She discussed various kinds of channels including new media.  She ended with teaching on how to determine what channel to use to pass across any message.

Daniel Nwaeze, founder of Diplomacy Opportunities, a blog for opportunities for young people from all over the world. Daniel shared with us the definition of information and media literacy and how social media could be used for various things, both good and bad. Daniel revealed how social media had been a means of connecting and networking for him as well as building relationships and making money. He explained that people ran blogs and social media outlets either to give out information, spread values or make money and sometimes for more than one of those reasons. Daniel added that while good things happen on social media, it is also used for cyber bullying and stalking and so many other wrong-doings. Information and media literacy, he quipped, was essentially making us media smart.

Charles Ichide was next. He spoke on understanding media and information literacy. He shared with participants a UNESCO Information and Media Literacy Course. He took us through a few things he learnt from it by asking questions and interacting with participants. He gave us some pointers to determine the authenticity of any information online.

Finally, Victoria Ibiwoye came on board, crowning the event with her global experiences and how media can be an opportunity to network, build relationships, establish long-lasting connections and showcase what you do. She spoke on applying media and information literacy. Victoria, commonly referred to as an African nomad because of her recent trips in and out of Nigeria, shared how certain opportunities for her came through building relationships on social media. She spoke of how it is important to build a brand for yourself, understand your audience and be double sure of editing posts before sending them out to the public.

The event ended with Ms. Juliana Oboh introducing Teenz Global and its founder, Mrs. Ijeoma Sorochi-Okorie to participants. She also enjoined them to vote for the founder in the ongoing JCI awards. The participants were grateful for the event and the lessons they learnt from it. Photo sessions took place afterwards.�  

 Olatubosun Chinwe-Taiwo.