01.01.2022 - 31.01.2023

Baltic Media Lab & Mentor Network

Alumni Affairs Disinformation Fund 2021 U.S. Embassy/Consulate
The project aims to work with highly motivated high school students who will serve as youth leaders in their
community and schools and will in turn raise the awareness of their fellow high school students about critical
thinking
and disinformation to achieve greater media literacy.
Participants will help their communities build resilience to state-sponsored disinformation, protect their
communities against public health misinformation, empower them to recognize and reject divisive narratives and hate speech, improve their ability to navigate polarized online spaces, and help them make decisions based on facts.

To fine tune their critical thinking skills, VitaTiim and New East's media lab forums will feature teachers,
journalists and experts in the field, using Embassy Tallinn and Riga's network of Alumni in media literacy and disinformation. Participants will learn about civic activism, activism through journalism, critical thinking, and more. Using IREX's model of "Learn to Discern" (a part of the Baltic Media Literacy Project) participants will complete challenges and tasks to put theory into practice. Students will then form teams to create projects for their local communities to address disinformation and increase media literacy. Teams will be assigned an expert alumni mentor and then compete in person at the border between Estonia and Latvia for the final forum.

Through theory and practice participants will improve their own ability to tackle disinformation. With the
challenge competition, teams will create projects that will have a lasting impact on their own community.
Participants will find creative solutions for their communities that encourage the dissemination of truthful news; nurture a healthy public debate with the whole community and, in particular, with their peers; make informed and factual decisions in their future work; encourage their representatives to pursue policies based on demonstrable needs, scientific findings and have a lasting impact in their communities.
      Project supported
      Contact
      Julia Dem
      project manager
      Phone: + 375 559 217 87
      E-mail: julia@vitatiim.ee