NEWS
Promoting the need for change through OPIN in Malta
- 30. April 2020
- Posted by: Ingrida Jotkaite
- Category: News
“Climate Changes. Truth doesn’t” – the theme adopted by ERYICA and member organisations to celebrate European Youth Information Day 2020. Youth information centres, which are member organisations of ERYICA, were encouraged to develop different strategies to support the campaign. The strategies should enable young people to reach reliable information whilst creating consciousness and awareness related to climate change.
As a result, youth information officers within Agenzija Zghazagh opted to use the e-participation platform OPIN. It is a resourceful tool to involve young people because it allows them to bring forward their opions. Through OPIN you can get valuable first-hand information from young participants. OPIN allows them to participate in decision making by highlighting which information they need. This is all very useful in the debates about climate change.
Agenzija Zghazagh is involved in the Erasmus+ KA2 project DIGY and supports the development of new e-learning materials, the creation of an OPIN community and improvements in the usability of OPIN. It was quite easy for the youth information officers to collect young people’s views on climate change through OPIN. In order to effectively use OPIN, the youth information officers were given trainings on how to best use the platform. They also had the opportunity to participate in mock projects.
OPIN has allowed the work of youth information officers to fall into place easily and implement the required social distancing measures against the spread of COVID-19 and still reach their target audience.
OPIN has proved to be the ideal tool to engage and involve young people during the campaign “Climate changes. Truth doesn’t”. Every week young people are encouraged to cast their votes and share their comments relevant to local shopping, travelling and food waste. Following the termination of these online polls, youth information officers will take up the information and views brought forward by the young participants and develop infographics which are intended to be presented to policymaker. They can be a reliable reference to implement changes and develop other youth-oriented campaigns that provide the required information by young people.
Simon Schembri, Aġenzija Żgħażagħ