UNICEF-led project shows students how video blogging can inspire social change
An online course has helped four girls to find their voice and inspire social change in their native towns and local communities.
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While most students spent their summer break applying for college, taking graduation exams and planning holidays, four girls decided to challenge themselves by signing up to a groundbreaking new project.
Digital Challengers: Creating Video Blogs for Social Change is an online course for young people that has been developed by UNICEF, Ukrainian Catholic University and Citrus Academy, with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID Ukraine). The course helps teenagers and young adults to speak about subjects that are important to them — including environmental activism, mental health and volunteer work — using social media such as YouTube and TikTok.
All four girls hoped to create media projects strong enough to inspire social change and become a steppingstone to their future.
This is how they got on.
Olha Kryzhanovska, 21, has been dreaming of a job in the media since the tenth grade. Although, she had recently been preparing to apply for a journalism major, her parents talked her out of it.
“I was a schoolgirl, and I thought my parents really knew better,” says Olha. “I went to Poland to study tourism but didn’t enjoy it, then I switched to the international relations department in Ternopil, then to law. I actually changed three majors, and now I am again at a loss what to do next. Having worked in the legal field, I was disappointed.”
Despite everything, Olha could not shake her dream of working in the media.
So, when the opportunity arose to enroll on the Digital Challengers course, there was no doubt in her mind. It gave her a chance to speak up about things she felt and that her peers might relate to.
"Of course, I chose the topic of self-fulfillment, self-acceptance and the global problem of mental health that comes with those things,” says Olha. “The issue of self-fulfillment hurt me, because I knew from childhood that I wanted to develop in the field of creativity and media, but I had no support and always did the wrong thing."
For Olha, the course became a kind of “salvation” — the first time she had been able to do something she wanted, as opposed to doing what others wanted. In just a few months, she learned how to edit videos, write scripts, promote her product and collaborate with others.
Thanks to the course, Olha created the YouTube channel Youth Pro, which she uses to inspire other young people concerned about similar issues. She also talks about finding ourselves and making ideas happen, and interviews people who have managed to find a job they love.
Daryna Kukhar, 21, from Lviv, saw the Digital Challengers course as the perfect opportunity to promote science among young people, especially girls.
Today, this is more relevant than ever. While the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) sector is one of the highest paid in the world, it is dominated by men, with figures from UNESCO showing that women account for less than 30 per cent of the workforce. In Ukraine, the number of girls and boys who study at college is almost equal, as of 2020. However, just 23 per cent of full-time STEM students are girls.
This year, Daryna completed her bachelor’s degree and enrolled in the master’s program of International Economic Relations at Ivan Franko Lviv National University. She currently works at Lviv Open Lab, an innovative educational and youth center, which offers free use of scientific labs to young people and regularly organizes lectures by various scientists.
“I am not a scientist myself, but I work with science, and I want to tell others about interesting things in a simple language—to encourage them to come to us, do science and learn something new,” explains Daryna.
Through the Digital Challengers course, she created a TikTok channel for LvivOpenLab. The channel's tagline is: “Science is interesting. Experiment!”
“The trainers’ advice really helped me,” says Daryna. “If you follow their algorithms and tips, everything really works. The most interesting thing was to learn about video editing and storytelling — I need all this to make science interesting.”
Daryna also had the opportunity to undertake an internship as a young content creator for UNICEF communication projects.
“I was very motivated by this program, because I was not confident in my abilities — I wasn’t sure I could work on a platform that I am not familiar with at all. It doesn’t seem so scary now.”
Viktoria Kravets, 17, has always had an eye for opportunities that influence decision-making and make young people's voices heard.
Thanks to her determination, Viktoria has now become the president of her school, the vice chair of Children’s Advisory Board in Lviv and a member of several local activist organizations.
Viktoria first tried making videos at the age of 13.
“I wanted to make videos for a long time, but I did not know anything – for example, how to edit,” she says. “I didn’t have the right equipment, I would only find some free software. I saw bloggers who would film what they wanted, who could express themselves via video. I wanted to be like them, but I didn’t know anything, couldn’t do anything. I tried, but it didn't look as good as the bloggers I came across in the feed. So I quit.”
The Digital Challengers course was a chance for Viktoria to improve her skills – to learn from lectures and then put her new-found knowledge into practice by editing, filming, writing scripts and establishing partnerships.
“Those interesting speakers interacted with the audience and illustrated everything with examples," says Viktoria. “It all helped me a lot — I had a more holistic approach to video-making as a result.”
“Teens are often seen as strange,” she says. "They are at this transition stage, they say they don’t know what they want, they have graduation tests coming up. And that's why adults decide everything for teenagers — because they think they know better. This triggers me a lot. I don’t like it that teens cannot have a say and parents decide everything for them. That’s why I wanted to promote this subject.”
Thanks to the Digital Challengers course, Viktoria created a YouTube channel for teens KravetsAboutChild and launched a TikTok channel of the national youth festival #MOLODVIZH. The Molodvizh festival takes place on September 4-5, 2021, in Lviv, and is a great opportunity for young people who strive to make a difference.
Viktoria plans to develop her YouTube channel as an educational project, featuring advice and conversation with interesting people who can inspire youngsters to fight for the right to have a say in decisions that affect them.
Anna Duras says her decision to enrol on the Digital Challengers course was a “spur-of-the-moment thing”, after she saw the advert just two days before the application deadline.
Anna is currently studying in the 11th grade at the Sheptytskyi Preparatory School in Lviv, where she dreams of enrolling in the Computer Science major. Digital Challengers has given her future a big boost, after she it helped her to launch a video blog, Niura Will Show. The blog is aimed at people who want to learn sign language and communicate using it.
“I made the channel that I wanted to see myself," says Anna. “When I started learning sign language on my own, I realized that most educational videos are tedious and outdated. I wanted to show that speaking another language, sign language, is cool!”
Anna is excited to have become part of the Digital Challengers community.
”I have big plans for the development of my social project,” she exclaims. “My core subject is sign language, which I want to make as exciting as possible. There is a stereotype that sign language is very difficult to master, and my peers are terrified by it. I want to break this stereotype so that we can all communicate as equals and make new friends. In addition, I plan to record interviews with speakers of sign language to show why this language is really cool, modern and emotional.”
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The Digital Challengers: Creating Video Blogs for Social Change online course for young people has been developed by UNICEF, Ukrainian Catholic University and Citrus Academy, with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID Ukraine).
The course helps teenagers and young adults to speak about issues that are important to them — including environmental activism, mental health and volunteer work — using social media such as YouTube and TikTok. The course is the first platform in Ukraine that specializes in teaching young people about the development of non-profit projects.
With the help of highly-qualified professionals from Citrus Academy, Ukraïner, Google, TikTok, Cosmopolitan Publishing, Hunky Production, creative agencies Senate Agency and Postmen, as well as singer Jerry Heil and blogger Kostya Klepka, the course helped 30 young people to create a media project from scratch over 10 weeks of training. The participants were selected from a cohort of more than 200 applicants.
The course is based on best global practices of youth capacity building and the methodology of digital youth engagement, developed and implemented with the support of UNICEF across the world, including in Ukraine. Digital technologies enable young people to have greater access to educational opportunities and to become a full-fledged partner in decision-making on policies they are affected by.
View all works of the finalists here
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