Youth Portal for the Latin America and the Caribbean - Youth Portal for the Latin America and the Caribbean

Promoting the Value of Free, Independent and Plural Media and the Community Participation for the Development among Young People

Following UNESCO guidelines, we intend to work intensely for the promotion of the value for the development of free, independent and plural media, alongside the value for the development of community participation. There are important experiences in both dimensions in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in many of them, young people have been and already are a central part, from different approaches and through varied operative strategies.

In this way, during the last decades, young people have worked intensely in the development and consolidation of community radios, alternative TV productions and printed newspapers in diverse formats and magnitudes. In the same line, more recently, young people have become main actors in the intense and dynamic use of new information and communication technologies, including the Internet.

Similarly, young people have become actively involved in different forms of community participation, from which we can highlight the ones related to public resources assignment (participative budget), social control of public policies (social audit) and local development (municipal programmes), which have been added to other more traditional modalities (integration to community centres, cooperatives of different type, etc.) which have had a positive impact on their respective spheres.

However, said initiatives are barely known outside their respective spheres of influence, consequently it would be highly relevant to foster a broader diffusion, together with the creation of virtual spaces for the discussion of experiences and the joint evaluation of their achievements and limitations, in view to their future potentialities. Accordingly, the Portal proposes:

•   Create a permanent space of gathering and exchange of experiences between Radios in the Internet, which are, at the same time, articulated with traditional mass media.
•   Firm up Virtual Workshops and Seminars focused on the value of free, independent and plural media, highlighting their values and relevance nowadays.
•   Develop a specific effort in the area of Distance Education, carrying out Training Courses focused on said subjects.
•   Publish special issues of our periodical series: “Temas” and “Territorios”, as well as of our E-Magazine, focused on these subjects.

We hope to promote this participative experiences of and with young people as a contribution to the construction of citizenship, and -to conclude- to the construction of more prosper, democratic and equal societies.

Montevideo, June 2009