BYN Partners
Balkan Youth Newsrooms’ leading organization is the Foundation for debate and education IDEA Southeast Europe, from Skopje, Republic of Macedonia.
IDEA Southeast Europe, Skopje
IDEA South East Europe is part of the international IDEA network with over ten years of experience in teaching debate to young people. Officially IDEA SEE was established on September 14th 2012 but two years before this formal establishment we had activities in Macedonia and in the region of South East Europe.
IDEA works with young people in communities with little or no history of debate or informed public discussion. We teach critical thinking, advocacy, conflict resolution, media and public speaking skills. We believe that debate is a valuable educational tool, not only because repeated studies have shown that it improves critical thinking, academic achievement, and public speaking, but also because it encourages the desire to engage in social and political issues from an informed and rational position.
IDEA SEE is also actively involved in debate and media capacity building among the NGO’s in SEE region taking part in debate tournaments in Serbia and Bulgaria as well as Media events in Bosnia and Hercegovina and visiting and identifying the capacity and needs of several debate organization in Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia and SEE region.
Founded in 1999, IDEA network is a provider of debate education. It serves hundreds of thousands of young people and educators every month with resources, training and events.
IDEA works with schools and universities, debate organizations and community groups. It partners with foundations, NGOs, businesses, and governments.
Our work leads to increased critical thinking, tolerance, enhanced cultural exchange and greater academic excellence.
Our partnering organizations in this project are:
Students radio at the State’s University Goce Delcev from Stip – UGD FM
University radio started operating on air at October 7-Th 2009 with experimental programme and after two months started to operate with regular programme. Programme through this years is mainly for the young people and students, but also for the academic society. In the past five years in the radio were participating over 100 student and young people sharing their ideas and efforts in the realization of the programme. At the moment the radio is operating with around 10 students and more than 20 shows in the regular programme schedule.
All interested students, not only the students from the Study programme of Journalism and Public relations at the Faculty of law, participate in the realization of the programme that has informative, entertaining and educational purpose.
The mission of the university radio is to inform the students for all the activities within the University and to play the role of some kind of bridge between the voice of the students and the voice of the University. Also the radio is playing the role of laboratory for the students of journalism and public relations at the University. Through the “hands on” media training and practicing they are producing different kind of programme, like radio debates, music shows, interviews, radio drama etc. The university radio goal is also to be an educator of the young people in this area in a way to offer different and noncommercial programme which is educative for them. Also a part of our mission is to entertain the youth in this region. From time to time the radio and its DJ’s are part of organizing local fun events.
Youth Press Association in Bosnia and Hercegovina – ONAuBIH from Sarajevo
Youth Press Association in BiH (Omladinska Novinska Asocijacija u Bosni i Hercegovini) or short – ONAuBiH is a nongovernmental organization founded in 2007. ONAuBiH is a multinational and multiethnic organization qualified to give young people a chance to meet the media, learn about the media and participate in creating the media space in BiH.
ONAuBiH organizes various projects with the goal to connect youth and media. It gives young people the opportunity to learn what they want to learn and participate directly in the media. We are a proud member of European Youth Press – the umbrella organization for all the youth media in Europe.
ONAuBiH has 400 members in 35 municipalities in BiH, covering a large area of BiH with its activities.
ONAuBiH is the leading organization for youth media in BiH which, using education, informing, critical thinking and providing young people with uncensored and politically uninfluenced media space works on establishing better quality of the media and building trust between the media and the citizens.
ONAuBiH has several field of work, four of them being the focus. These fields of work consist of various activities and projects - Freedom of Media and Media Professionalism, Media Literacy, Cooperation with institutions that deal with media and Cooperation with organizations that deal with media.
Juzne vesti from Nis, Serbia
Established in August 2009, Juzne vesti (officially in January 29th 2010) is the first news internet portal that covers specifically the region of southeast Serbia. It covers the events from exactly 28 cities and municipalities from South Serbia. In difference to all other local and regional media in this region, Južne vesti are focused only to news of importance for citizens of South Serbia, while other media publish news of national and international importance as well. For the last five years since our establishment, Juzne Vesti has succeeded in building the reputation of an independent, incorrupt, and transparent media, which, above all, works in the interest of citizens of the South and South-Eastern Serbia.
The young team, consisting of journalists, programmers and activists who have built their career in civil sector, has successfully created the information portal which is proud of its constantly growing audience of readers - the reported monthly growth of 12%, over 2.2 million pageviews per month with over million page visits, over 130,000 facebook fans and 6,000 followers on Twitter.
One of the largest components of Juzne Vesti’s work targets investigative journalism, primarily on issues related to manipulations in public sector, spending taxpayers’ funds, corruption and misuse of public resources in general. Considering the specific political situation in Serbia, the editorial team, is constantly facing different types of pressure, including spontaneous and unusually lengthy financial checks, bribe offers, direct and indirect threats on behalf of highly-positioned officials, who are as well functionaries of political parties.
Juzne Vesti is the first Internet portal in Serbia who has recognized the jurisdiction of the Press Council and has accepted the rules of all its regulatory bodies, while creating such a structure requires mechanisms which operate and respond to specific needs and situations in the society and as well demands from Juzne Vesti to function as an independent structure. The work of Juzne Vesti is based on values defined in the well-recognized principles, such as «Democratic media» and «Participatory media»
