Evelyn Seubert from Cleveland High School Media Academy in Reseda, California who is also the president of IYMS gave the third presentation to the participants of IYMS. She talked about the ways in which she and her colleagues use media to fight prejudice among the students.

She talked about how a lot of her students knew very little about people from Afghanistan and they thought that they are very different from Americans, so she decided to get her students to communicate and cooperate with Afghan students and create 3 films taking place in Afghanistan, teaching her students about Afghan culture in an interesting and engaging way.

You can watch one of the short films, “Tasadof” on youtube:

Kate Randolph, Teaching Artist with The Music Center, LA plays the mother in the film. She is one of the special guests of the Summit this year.

Some of the footage was filmed in Afghanistan, and some of it was filmed in America. Ms Seubert emphasized that her students learned a lot about Afghan culture while they were writing the script, since they had to talk with the Afghan students about their customs and way of life.

Cleveland High School also sent some filming equipment to Afghanistan so that the students there can make a documentary about Teen Teach, a program in which older students teach children to speak English. There are around 1200 students participating in this program.

The second presentation of the 3rd day of the Summit was held by Birgitta Olsson from Film i Halland, Sweden.

Ms Olsson introduced the participants of the 6th International Youth Media Summit to the Creative Force Western Balkans project, which was coordinated by Film i Halland from Sweden and the Media Education Centre from Serbia with the support of the Swedish Institute.

This project includes four workshops, all of which took place in different countries in the Western Balkans. The workshops were held in Jajce, Prizren and Peja in the period between June 2009 and July 2011.

Ms Olsson invited the participants of all the workshops to join her on the stage and say a few words about the workshops. After this a selection of films produced in the workshops was screened.

The workshop in Jajce was a special workshop, since the participants were making documentary films on self images and in the other three workshops young people created animations expressing their attitudes on different aspects of implementing the Human Rights Declaration in everyday life.

Creative Force in Jajce:

Creative Force in Prizren:

Creative Force in Peja:

Photos by Natalie Greppi and Suncica Mitrovic

Watch one of the documentary films from Jajce below!

3rd August was a very special day for the 6th IYMS, since our friends from Bosnia, Sweden and USA held presentations about their organisations and their work related to the education of young people in their countries. The first presentation was given by Azra Bascelija, the director of SOS Social Centre “Hermann Gmeiner” from Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Their vision is that Every child belongs to a family and grows with love, respect and security.

Their mission is to build families for children in need, help them shape their own futures and share in the development of their communities.

In the presentation Ms Bascelija emphasized that the goal of their organisation is education for all.

More than 1500 children and youths participate in their activities every month. These activities are mostly non-formal education, and they include workshops, sports, dance, theatre, exhibitions, music (orchestra, guitar lessons), photography and art. They also have language, Maths and IT classes among other activities. All the activities taking place in the Open Space of the Centre are free.

The goal of the Centre is to include not only children, but entire families in their program and to help marginalised and poor families to stay together. Their activities have three target groups – children, youths and adults. All the beneficiaries of the Centre have individual needs and another goal of the Centre is to help fulfill these needs.

If you are interested in learning more about the Centre and hlping them reach their goals visit their website – SOS Social Centre “Hermann Gmeiner”, Sarajevo

On the third day of the Summit all the participants were divided into 7 groups and all groups started working on the scripts.

Since a single picture is worth a thousand words, here are some pictures of the groups working hard at creating their scripts and storyboards. Enjoy!

Violence

Discrimination

Women’s Rights

Poverty

Health

Environment

Youth

And the documentary crew is already having so much fun! (See the photo below)

People from all around the world have gathered once again to talk about the seven issues that appear in different forms in all of our countries – Discrimination, Health, Women’s Rights, Environment, Youth (Empowerment), Poverty and Violence. The Summit will be held from 1st to 12th August in Belgrade, Serbia. In the Summit young people from Japan, Greece, Nigeria, Sweden, USA, Canada, France, Turkey, Germany, Poland, Spain, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Serbia are going to present their ideas through 7 PSAs and declarations about the issues.

Watch the Violence and Poverty PSA from last year below.

1st August was arrival day—Belgrade welcomed some old and some new members of the Summit family. Since the official program was starting on 2nd August, the participants who arrived earlier explored the city with the help of the hosts from the Media Education Centre.

On 2nd August the day began with a workshop in which all of the participants introduced themselves and told the others about their expectations regarding the Summit.

In the afternoon Beatrice from Sweden and Paulina from Poland held a workshop on gender stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination.

After the workshop there were discussions and brainstorming sessions about all of the issues, and the participants chose the issues they want to work on.

In the evening at the Opening Ceremony members of the Executive Committee welcomed everyone and officially opened the 6th International Youth Media Summit.

6th International Youth Media Summit – Let’s shape the Future!

It is a new film project made in co-production by Gombolyag Foundation and Balassi Institute in the frame of the current Hungarian EU-presidency and will be screened in the following locations: Bucharest, Balchik, Bratislava, Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana and Budapest at the BuSho short film festival. The so called joy therapy will include a short prologue followed by the screening of the finalist shorts of „Are we Europeans!?” and selected award winning shorts in the topic of Danube, Water, Environment.

Next location is BELGRADE in cooperation with the Media Education Centre and new Belgrade ECO multimedia festival “Danube FEST”, project Media Education Centre developing with support of the “Stari Grad” Belgrade Municipality and Lions Club International “Stari Grad”…

The filmmakers whose works made it to the competition can register on the website till 30th of july, if they wish to participate the festival in person. Here is a little taste from last year of what is the „BuSho experience”. Now for the next 2 months we got nothing else left to do but creating the fundamental conditions of making this festival to happen, since apart from one, all of our tenders were declined! It seems that the Board of Trustees took things seriously when deciding by considering 2011 as the year of European Volunteering, so everyone works voluntarily at the festival, although neccessary things like festival catalogue, cinema rental, jury costs or the awards have to be paid for. But we’ll find a solution and all will be welcome in the first week of September at the 7th BuSho Festival!

By Marina Lalovic, coordinator for McLuhan’s Anniversary of the International Youth Media Summit

The quality of media will survive
Derrick de Kerchove: “Print media won’t die”

In your opinion, will print media survive?

Absolutely. In my opinion web articles are very different from print media articles. These media are not eliminating, but rather completing each other. Basically, books still represent the authority compared to the information which can be found on the internet.

We can divide today’s public into readers and writers. The real readers are just those who daily consult the “real” palpable print media, while I personally consider that those who read news on the internet,  are “writers”, because everyone in some way is creating their own news: by hypertext reading and connecting the news, everyone gives out information on their personal opinions. Also in this case, quality represents the only real additional value.

Can I Pads be valid substitutes of press media?

Only partially. We are again talking about the impalpable “disappearing” word and the impossibility of completely maintaining the written information. This is the reason why I think I Pads won’t completely win over the traditional print media. At least, I hope so.

What is the most probable media perspective?

I think that a kind of ”atomization” of journalism will take place, with a great number of small newspapers. The logic of media will change: some of the renowned dailies will be replaced by hundreds of small newspapers.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has already  introduced  a charge for the “Wall Street Journal”. Do you agree with this solution for the defense of professional journalism?

I think that for now it is the right solution. Just like we pay for a plane ticket or other services, we are supposed to pay for information on the web . However, adequate ways of paying must still be found. Today it is possible to charge for the news or publish it for free and obtaining funds from advertisement. It is all about different strategies but the fact remains that whoever produces useful information must be paid for this. I‘m not sure what the future will bring about, but I’m quite positive that quality news must be paid for.

Your teacher McLuhan, creator of the theory on mass-media and of the famous “global village”, divided media into hot, such as television, without a direct interaction with users and cool, like the radio that, on the contrary, involves the public. Is this division still valid?

Dividing media into hot and cool is the only concept that I didn’t completely share with McLuhan. I think that today a more adequate division would be between high and low resolution media; the internet being a suitable example of low resolution media.

How much time do you spend on the computer and internet?

Too much!

Do you have a facebook profile?

I have it thanks to other people who created it. Until now I have more than one thousand friends! Unfortunately I don’t have much time for the social media because of my everyday duties.

IYMS is a yearly summit which brings teen filmmakers and teen advocates from around the world together to plan ways of inspiring others in their generation to shape the future through media and action.

Seven Voices In Time will bring 80 teenagers from many countries together to do something about the seven issues that most impact their future: Discrimination/Racism, Poverty, Violence, Health, Environment, Women’s Rights and Youth Empowerment.
The young delegates will:
Work with dynamic leaders who are making a difference in non-profits and organizations around the world
Develop resolutions of action to present to the United Nations and their own governments
Create powerful public service announcements with the help of filmmakers and media professionals
Learn how to organize international youth media exchange projects and find partners from other countries
Be part of the IYMS one hour television special.
Celebrate a united world with art, music, film, dance and food from other cultures

To apply CLICK HERE
6th Summit is: Intercultural dialogue, creativity and innovation in media production, publishing and internet broadcasting! PSA’s, films, documentaries, TV, radio, animation, internet… all kind of media made by young people all around the Planet!

The program of the 6th Summit is exclusively designed to provide Skill and Professional Development as well as familiarizing the young participants with codes and standards of Media. Also, provide media platform for young adults to express and present the seven significant issues relating to them globally:
HEALTH, VIOLENCE, WOMEN’S RIGHTS, YOUTH, ENVIRONMENT, POVERTY and RACISM/DISCRIMINATION
To apply CLICK HERE

The Closing Ceremony took place on 18th August in REX Cultural Centre.

Mr Miomir Rajcevic, the Executive Director, and Ms Evelyn Seubert, the President of the Summit officially closed the Summit.

The documentary crew prepared a 40-minute film consisting of their footage from the Summit workplace, film sets and workshops. It also included an introduction about the 5th Summit and an announcement of the 6th Summit by Ms Evelyn Seubert, the PSAs, the declarations and the participant’s impressions about the Summit.

We would like to thank the documentary crew for capturing the most interesting moments of the Summit and their hard work on producing the final presentation. Their amazing work on putting together the material from the Summit resulted in a fantastic closing ceremony which left all of the participants and the people who came to see what we have done with a very positive feeling. Everyone was left with an impression that this year’s results were much better than the ones of the previous years.

We would also like to thank the Executive and Youth Committee, who were always there to help, advise and support all the crews.

The 6th Summit will take place 1st to 12th August 2011 in Belgrade, Serbia.

See you next year!