UNICEF supports youth engagement in COVID-19 information campaign

TBILISI, Georgia, 17 December, 2020. UNICEF is launching a new project to involve young people in an information sharing campaign related to COVID-19 in Georgia. Over the next five months, sixty elected and trained “youth health ambassadors” across the country will develop creative materials on COVID-19 protective measures and share them online among their peers and other members of society. These activities will assist the public in increasing trust, safety, and resilience against COVID-19. The project is implemented with the support from USAID.

UNICEF partners with UNA-Georgia, a well-established organization, to carry out this project. UNAG plans to engage, inform, and empower young people against COVID-19 through a set of activities, where youth create and produce the material themselves.

The elected youth health ambassadors will go through a comprehensive training on pandemic related topics, as well as on information sharing and persuasion skills, together with media literacy and protection from disinformation.

These youth members will help develop a social media toolkit in three languages (Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani) with ready to share texts, links, photos, video and other types of materials to timely and effectively spread information on the pandemic among their friends and other interested parties.

Additionally, the young ambassadors will be involved in creating COVID-19 related explainers, such as posters and infographics, to visualize the risks of the virus more clearly.

The group will be assisted by young influencers, popular on social media channels in Georgia, to widely share COVID-19 related safety measures and the materials developed by the project ambassadors.

As the health crisis continues to affect the public and the most vulnerable among them, it is of utmost importance to include multiple groups in information campaigns against COVID-19. Youth, as one of the most influential groups in society, can act as the behavior multiplier not only among their counterparts, but among the rest of the society as well.

UNICEF, through its Risk Communication and Advocacy direction, continues implementing public awareness raising campaigns against COVID-19. Within this section, parents of children of all age groups receive tips and recommendations to improve their communication during the pandemic. Additionally, residents of the regions receive COVID-19 related daily news from a local perspective.