Aiming to promote youth’s involvement in the media by improving their knowledge and skills on media literacy, a university-based Media 101 Club has trained 88 students including 48 females from various faculties at two universities in Phnom Penh – Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia (PUC) and University of Puthisastra. One of the success stories of the club is the energetic participation of the members in video competitions.
In October 2019, three Media 101 Club members – Mr. Cheam Sethi, Ms. Ly Vanika, and Ms. Chhouk Chanthida – teamed up to join a short video contest co-organized by the German Embassy and the Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung in Cambodia. As the result, their video entitled “Free Your Mind” won the 4th place in the competition.
“I always want to be a video creator, in this advanced digital era, I can do what I am interested in and at the same time produce positive impacts on society through my contents,” said Mr. Chhorn Porseng, PUC Media 101 Club Batch No. 2 alumni.
He has joined his friends in two different video competitions, in June and November 2020. The first contest was titled “Gender Equality for the Next Generation” organized by Cambodian Center for Independent Media (CCIM) under the Voice for Gender Equality project with the support from the European Union (EU). Surprisingly, his video “Women in Journalism” won 2nd place in the competition.
Likewise, his second video named “Women and Youth in Leadership” hosted by Transparency International Cambodia (TI), with financial support from USAID Cambodia, the European Union in Cambodia, and the Embassy of Sweden (SIDA) in Phnom Penh. In the final round, his team’s video stood among the top four.
“Video sessions taught me how to prepare the pre-production stage and edit the post-production, of course, it provided me the video skills,” he continued, “I will keep up those skills for the future career.”
Ms. Sea Vannary, PUC Media 101 Club Batch No. 1 alumni, claimed, “I did change a lot in terms of media understanding and practices after I joined the Media 101 club. Writing the video script, producing video sequences, and filming the different shot sizes are what I could contribute to the video production and I found these even more useful and interesting.”
She and her friends have applied for a video competition that focused on human rights issues, conducted by the United Nations Human Rights in Cambodia. Then, after going through the selection process, social media votes, and hand-writing test, the final result was announced that her team’s video was one among the six winners.
Another PUC Media 101 Club Batch No. 1 alumni, Mr. Lang Vandy, has also worked in a team in the video competition conducted by Transparency International Cambodia (TI) in November 2020 under the theme ‘The Accountability on Tax for Inequality Reduction.’ At the last stage of the competition, his team’s video won 2nd place.
More importantly, to promote media and information literacy among Cambodian youths, Cambodian Center for Independent Media (CCIM) has organized a short video contest under the theme “The Challenges Youths Are Facing during Covid-19”. Impressively, Media 101 Club’s alumni, Ms. Thay Thanith and Mr. Lang Vandy, have joined together in producing a video titled “500 people”, have made it to the 4th runner-up position.
The active involvement in video competition, however, is not the only notable achievement the club has obtained so far. More than ordinary, Media 101 Club has developed two unprecedented media curriculums — offline and online versions — consisting of diverse topics relevant to media knowledge specifically on social media, verification, security, privacy, photos, and videos. In every training, students explored media topics and enjoyed fun activities organized and facilitated by two MIL instructors and produced their media products at the end of each session. With different preferences and interests, Media 101 Club alumni often use other possible means to promote and share their media knowledge.
Media 101 Club is organized under the Media and Information Literacy (MIL) project started from 2018 to 2020 implemented by the Cambodian Center for Independent Media (CCIM) in collaboration with DW Akademie, Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia, and University of Puthisastra. (Ms. Hout Salinit, MIL Project Officer)
