By Sariba Manneh
The Open Media Centre (OMC), together with UNESCO, recently conducted a three-day media literacy training for eleven senior secondary school from all regions of the country.
The training, which was funded by the United Nations Peace-building Fund (UNPBF), aims to strengthen the National infrastructure for peace, promote social cohesion in the country, and empower young Gambians to become responsible, critical, and ethical citizens in their online engagements. The training is part of efforts to address hate speech and information disorder, misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information, and to promote responsible digital citizenship.
Addressing participants at the event, the head of the media monitoring and fact-checking Unit at Malagen and project coordinator for the OMC, Mr. Kebba Jeffang, said the training is meant to orient students on how to judiciously use and share information on social media, as well as protect them from cybercrime and bullying. He said students should be very cautious of information sharing on the digital landscape as some might be detrimental. He implored participants to be ambassadors in their various regions and to serve as regional focal persons.
“We cannot say that students should not use social media, but what we can do is to protect them by giving them guidelines on the proper ways of handling and sharing information. There is a lot of useful information on the internet, but there are also some that can be implicative as well. We have a lot of scammers on social media, and we have seen people who lost some opportunities because of their activities on social media,” Mr. Jeffang said.
Ngenarr Yassin Jeng, the UNESCO national project officer for the Gambia on her part, said peace building is at the core of the project. She warned that information disorder in the form of disinformation, misinformation, and hate speech, has all the potential to destroy society.
According to her, the goal of the training is to empower young people particularly students, to develop the competence needed to critically engage with information from both online and traditional media.
Fatoumatta Camara, a student representing Nusrat Senior Secondary School, said the training is meant to empower them with a critical mind as part of Malagen’s continuous efforts to discourage hate speech. She went on to advise students to be very attentive during the training because they are expected to implement the knowledge gained in their respective regions. She further thanked UNESCO for bankrolling the program as well as all other partners for their support and collaboration.
Musa Jallow, a student of Tahir Senior Secondary School, said he learned a lot from the training, singling out data management and avoiding hate speech as the most significant skills he gained from the training.
“I really learned a lot from the training, especially on data management and hate speech. I have learned how to protect my data and personal information and how to manage my privacy menu on social media,” Jallow affirmed and hailed the OMC and UNESCO for allowing them to attend such interesting training.
22 students and 11 teachers from UNESCO/NATCOM affiliated schools across all the regions of the country have already received an exclusive three-days training on media and information literacy issues such as cyber security, data privacy and protection, countering hate speech and fact-checking
