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Media integral to reaching youth for social cohesion
Social media and the mainstream media outlets have integral roles in bringing about social cohesion among young people.
This is according to information outlined in the National Draft plan towards achieving a more socially cohesive society.
The National Draft Plan for Social Cohesion was unveiled earlier this year. Then Social Cohesion Minister, Amna Ally, said the plan was launched to bring Guyana one step closer to achieving an enabling environment where persons are willing to embrace their unique diversities, “and where we will support key actions that will replace confrontation with corporation, facilitate the reduction of inequalities and promote greater tolerance and acceptance, mutual respect and improved livelihood for all.”
With assistance from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Ministry was able to complete a series of sensitisation and consultation sessions countrywide. The democratic approach by the government, the Minister said, is in keeping with the government’s aim to ensure the mass of the citizens were duly consulted before the plan was completed.
Social media and the mainstream media outlets integral to bringing about social cohesion among young people in Guyana.
According to documents seen by this newspaper during the pilot stage of the face-to-face consultations (Regions 2, 7 and 10), the participation of youth was limited.
The information indicated that it was recognized that traditional strategies (public consultations, focus groups) are perhaps effective in mobilizing affiliated youth, but are unable to engage the average young person and those at risk.
Efforts were therefore made to reach the young people through Facebook and radio. It was also pointed out that consolidated inputs of the media consultations have been incorporated into this draft Strategic Plan.
“The strategy for youth engagement was designed to address the reality that one single consultative approach would not reach the entire youth spectrum, which is made of three separate but at times overlapping sub-categories of males and females between 18 and 35 years of age.”
According to the document, while these groups often fall within more than one category, it is evident that there are different groups of youth holding very different needs and opinions.
Hence, the importance of cumulating inputs from both the face-to-face municipal and regional consultations and the media consultations using radio and Facebook.
As part of the process, Dr. Paloma Mohamed Martin spearheaded a team of researchers, who managed the media consultation during the period October-November 2016.
There are radio call-in programmes; six radio programmes on four stations were utilized to host half hour programmes for four weeks.
Following training with presenters and negotiations with radio stations as well as preparation of the Facebook page and online postcards, the project began on Wednesday.
The audio recordings were collected from each station for every programme. Additionally, each programme was monitored by a member of the project team, monitoring forms and transcripts of each programme were created.
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