Turkish and German participants learn in Münster how to become media trainers

Young people from Germany and Turkey have been working together during one week in the project 'Citizen Media for Intercultural & Political Dialogue', a initiative between AKO e.V., from Münster, European Youth4Media Network e.V. and Youth Art Research and Training Association, from Istanbul. 

From the 7th to 14th of February, five Turkish participants visited Bürgerhaus Bennohaus to take part in the training course ‘Train the trainer’, where they have learnt about media and pedagogical competences during the workshops lead by Grzegorz Konopski (European Volunteer AKO) and Daria Jaranowska (managing director of Youth4Media).

The main objective of the project ‘Citizen Media for Intercultural & Political Dialogue’ is the creation of a community media centre in Istanbul and the development of a multimedia platform. According to Arndt Selders, leader of the project, “the Turkish participants will increase their skills in cross media, online journalism and project management in order to take part in the community media centre which will be established in Istanbul. Ideally, in the end of the project there will be a network of 10 qualified trainers and about 120 citizen journalists plus the community media centre in Istanbul”.

Some of the workshops in which they have took part are: ‘Who is a trainer?’, where they talked about teaching, personal, social, professional, methodical and pedagogical competences of the trainer; and ‘Communication’, where they were thinking about how to solve conflicts which can come up during a training.

“I want to create media trainings in Istanbul with my media team. We need citizen’s media in Turkey, that’s why we want to give trainings to children, young people and adults”, said Aykut Subasi, vice president of YOUTHART. Like Aykut, Çağlar Çalı, another participant and member of YOUTHART, was also glad to take part on this training: “I really like to learn how to be a trainer. This training course, which is giving us information and knowledge about media, is really good for me because it´s my dream to be a media trainer”.

The following days they took part in the workshops 'Perfect presentation', where they talked about themselves, showing a curriculum vitae with their educational, professional and personal background, analysing the information that they give about each of them and the way how it is presented. They also learnt about journalistic techniques, writing and interviewing in the workshops about ‘Journalism’, where they wrote some articles that will be published on Y4M website. This is very important for Öykü Çetin, participant from Istanbul: “I am studying TV Journalism and because we want to open a media centre in Istanbul I could be a media trainer there and I could use the knowledge that we have learnt here”.

After getting the last lessons, they conducted their own workshops about video making, camera settings, sound techniques, picture composition, camera shots/angles and video editing. This was the most interesting for Fırat Büyükcoşkun: “The most that I like are the workshops which we conducted by ourselves, where you can learn so much seeing your mistakes and practising what you have learnt from the professional trainers like Grzegorz and Daria”.

The last day they received the certificates. After the evaluations and the feedback from the trainers, the participants realized the importance of being a media trainer and the hard work that it means: “I know media is a really powerful tool for society, that´s why I would like to be a media trainer. I thought that it could be easy but to be a trainer is actually so hard because you have to be patient and connect with the people”, said Umut Açıkgöz.

All in All, there will be 4 training courses in the project. This one about trainer competences has been the second one. Both partners together will try to create 20 video reports on the topics of anti-discrimination, freedom of expression, civil society engagement, inter-cultural understanding, youth education, environmental protection, employability, cultural diversity, equality, political education and about Turkey being a candidate for the membership in the EU. These videos, plus text and articles, will be published on the online multimedia platform. The 3rd training course will take place in May in Munster and the last one will be in Istanbul in November.

The project is founded by the Republic of Turkey and by the European Union in the Civil Society Dialogue program. 

Isabel Barragán

 

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