Last Updated on: 12th September 2023, 09:19 pm
Adjumani I Youth Empowerment Foundation (YEF) in partnership with Media for All (media4all) has embarked on training refugee youths in Adjumani on fact-checking and the art of public speaking.
The training which is targeted to roll to all the refugee settlements in Adjumani is aimed at empowering the young refugees on how to avoid online and offline fraud and breaking the cycle of ignorance of online and offline fraud.
William Vuga – the co-founder of Youth Empowerment Foundation said, the youths today are the biggest users of online platforms and other social media platforms and must be trained on how to use them online and offline without causing any harm.
“The 2013, South Sudan conflict was fueled by online hate speech and social media, I think it is necessary for the young refugees to be trained on their online safety, as the youths, they are the people having phones, laptops and other gadgets that can connect to the internet,” Vuga said
“We want to train 1500 young people to fight Online Fraud, Disinformation, Misinformation and hate speech. We are also training on how to fight cultural rigidity and the rights of children in refugee settlement,” he added.
Doreen Bazio, the Executive Director of Media for All, stressed that there is a need to train refugee youths with skills and knowledge on access to factual information and strengthening of expression through public speaking and fact-checking.
“This is to eliminate the risk factors that may occur during the processes and stages of information access as well as the need to be able to present their challenges as refugees, and also express their opinion without having violated the media laws,” she stated
Eunice Achan is a refugee youth in Pagirinya Refugee settlement. She attested that the training will help her as a young woman to also change many other girls in the refugee settlement.
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“As refugee young girls we are faced with a lot of challenges, issues of defilement, rape and other domestic issues simply because we are not exposed to some of these things, we are not in leadership, I am happy I can now speak in front of people, I have learnt how to consume information on social media without violating the laws,” Achan said.
Joseph Amoko is another refugee from Pagirinya refugee settlement. She explained that the training will help them when they go back to South Sudan as the biggest issue causing conflict is social media where information is shared but people consume it without verifying the source of the information.
“I have learnt some important tools of fact-checking, now I can guide the people in my community to verify information on social media,” Amoko said.
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Denham Amacha Goli, the research and training person at Media for All told the young refugees that as youths, they have to determine the destiny of their country by propelling positive information sharing that dispels disinformation, misinformation and hate speech.