We aim to give civic superpowers ✨ to children from rural Romania so that they can grow up to be community leaders, change-makers, creators thriving in our digital society. 👏🏻
Here, they learn how to collaborate, search, create and publish content relevant to their communities connected to challenges such as radicalization, hate speech, or polarization. We aim to reach 3 rural communities and work with 60 children aged 10-16 to help them become creators for change inside their communities.🤝

1. Tazlau - Neamt. 2. Pietrari - Valcea. 3. Vladesti - Arges. + National level

Problem framing> [user] Children aged 10-16 years old in Romania from rural areas [need] to feel confident 🤸🏼‍♀️ about their future (in terms of learning new skills, in a relaxed way) and get access to a platform where they can talk to each other, relax, learn by having fun, create content and become civically active, [insight] because while the education system is slow to adapt 🏃🏼‍♀️ to the ever-changing 21st Century's challenges, it deprives them of understanding new concepts like fake news, radicalization, activism, sustainability, democracy, European values.

We know that the same problem persists everywhere in Romania. Once we achieve the proof of concept for our target places, we will scale 🚀 this to the national level. We are inviting you on a bold voyage!

We are here for the curious minds! 🧐
We focus our mission on children aged 10 to 16 from rural areas from places where there is only one school or library, in the best scenario. We aim to help children who need contexts of development and interaction to feel more confident in their future. ⚡
We target the first Romanian generation born as European Union citizens with little to no opportunities in a matter of education alternatives.
While some are engaged, others are disinterested and do not participate, possibly because they feel their voice is not taken into account by the local decision-makers.
TG2 - Teachers, librarians and parents. They will understand that our project represents an alternative to their activities, respectively, something that increases their child's passion.👊

Theory of change.⚡
If we create a new creative hub designed for children from rural areas who want to become content creators, then they will get access to a place where they can meet each other and learn how to create useful content relevant to their local communities, thus become civically active.

Children are in ♡ with vlogging, and our strategy is to use their passion as a Trojan horse – to get their attention and empower them with civic superpowers. ✨

Our methodology> Watchers into Creators. We will use the 4C's (creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, communication) – strategy;

Our pilot edition (2020) – We designed a curriculum with 10 video lessons and 6 challenges on creative topics. ✌️

In addition to what we did last year - for this edition, we will>
1. Use our media production studio https://useful-studio.com/ to record the lessons on civic topics needed, organize the live-streaming sessions with our guests;
2. Design a creative media space in the library/school from our target places to prepare the participants for the "Real World";
3. Introduce a Toolkit with both creative and civic lessons and challenges that can easily be put into use at any school/library in Romania during the project and outside it;
4. Launch the digital open space at the national level – a platform for children who want to become creators for change.🤳

If education = future
And children ≠ education
Then children ≠ future

Vlogging Academy aims to become a community of audacious souls with ideas and democratic principles, both online and offline, an initiative that promotes the engagement of the representatives of the future generations that can become the catalyst of change in the local context.

For that, we aim to>
⚡ Implement our ten months-project in 3 rural communities and work with 60 children;
⚡ Design 3 creative media space in the library from our target places;
⚡ Create together with children 180+ materials;
⚡ Create a Toolkit designed for librarians/teachers, including engaging lesson plans, 20+ interactive video courses and 30 Civic Challenges;
⚡ Launch the digital open space at the national level - online platform.

To help our participants get actively involved, we prepared 3 modules* that contains 3 workshop events on civic topics (research) and 3 workshop events on content creation skills (creation).

*Module = a collaborative experience that features engaging dialogues with experts on European topics, active citizenship workshops and live-streaming sessions on learning new skills to empower participants to become creators and adopt a change-maker mindset.

Basically, we use their biggest passion - the online environment - to gather them together to debate and discover new ways of participation. 🏆
Through our creative challenges, we help children use Social Media not to disseminate fake news, hate speech or polarization, but to help their communities identify and avoid them.

Our team will consist of specialists with experience in project management, curriculum design, communication and working with children.
👦 Alin will be the project manager. He co-initiated educational programs implemented in 200+ rural communities in Romania and co-created initiatives presented in 10 European countries.
👧 Isabela will be the project assistant, coordinating the communication process. She has a solid background in this direction, with over 3 years of work in communication, marketing and social projects.
👦 Ionut will be our filmmaker, will be in charge of our studio and all the production process, where we will create the filmed lessons for the kids.
👧 Elena will be our curriculum designer – she will help us create the methodology and correctly build the lesson plans.

Creative media spaces in the library: 6,000 EUR
Project management: 16,000 EUR
Travel and accommodation costs: 1,200 EUR
Communication costs: 2,000 EUR
Studio - rental costs for recording our materials: 1,200 EUR
Prizes for participants and national edition: 1,500 EUR
Equipment: 4,600 EUR
Creation of the online platform: 2,000 EUR
Administrative costs: 1,000 EUR
Toolkit creation costs: 1,000 EUR

We will be happy to receive all kinds of constructive feedback that can help us improve our project! Also, we would be very excited to connect to others having similar intentions.