Winners of the 2021 Media Civics Lab Bootcamp and Small Grants Competition Named
Break the Fake Movement recently concluded its three-day Media Civics Lab Bootcamp by presenting the winners of the event’s Small Grants Competition. Four outstanding pitches made by youth-led organizations around the Philippines were chosen and awarded a cash grant incentive to help them implement their project proposals in their communities.
“We are proud to congratulate the winners for their achievements. We hope that with this grant, you are empowered even more to continue your advocacies and inspire the youth around you to bring positive change to our world” writes Break the Fake Movement in a Facebook post saluting the winners.
Winning Pitches
Bagging the first prize and a cash grant of 50,000 pesos are the group Troll Busters. Comprising of youth leaders headed by Brgy. Arabunog SK Chairperson Julius Bernal in Pastrana, Leyte, the group wowed the judges with their winning pitch entitled “Na Busted: Utilizing Tech4Ed in Empowering Young People of Pastrana, Leyte Against Online Disinformation and Exploitation”.
The project would like to solve the proliferation of fake news, disinformation, and online sexual exploitation by utilizing Tech4Ed Hub in providing MIL and OSAEC/CSEC training and mentoring, to help young people decrease their vulnerability to fake news, disinformation, and exploitation of young people in Pastrana, Leyte.
Second prize and went to the Anluwagi Project for their Project iWIN – Information on Wheels Initiative that aims to educate the Indigenous People community in the municipality of Tapaz, Capiz about Media and Information Literacy (MIL) focusing and combating misinformation and disinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Anluwagi Project’s Project iWIN will receive small grants amounting P20,000, mentoring support, offline media literacy toolkits for their media projects.
Claiming joint third place are the youth organizations For our Farmers PH and SK Imbang Grande Youth Leaders.
For our Farmers PH, Inc. is a youth-led, non-stock, non-profit organization which aims to help and uplift local farmers and fisherfolks while SK Imbang Grande Young Leaders presented a pitch of their Project iSTAND NOW that aims to provide a crowdsourced platform for the community to combat fake news and disinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic in the City of Passi in Iloilo province. In addition, the project aims to capacitate the young people of Passi City on how to identify misleading news and disinformation in the advent of social media.
About the Bootcamp
The three-day Media Civics Lab Bootcamp and Small Grants Competition focused on media and information literacy (MIL) discussion aimed at empowering young community leaders to champion factual media practices and pioneer creative problem-solving projects in their communities.
The Bootcamp imparted appropriate design thinking framework which includes ideation, pitching, project management and validation in helping participants come up with innovative policy designs and project proposals.
The boot camp also presented keynote talks and presentations from at least 20 participating organizations from various media organizations, NGOs and the different partners of Break the Fake.
The program also included a Youth Fellowship where participants engaged with other youth leaders to learn, collaborate and design solutions with MIL groups.
An online fair of media and literacy organizations, coaching and mentoring sessions with mentors from the YSEALI community, and a small grants competition completed the three-day boot camp.
