St. John’s Antigua- The youths in Antigua & Barbuda will get their chance to put their own stamp on the media through the Antigua & Barbuda Youth Media Network.

Started in 2010, the Youth Media Network’s mission is to relay information and current affairs using technocological gadgets such as phones, using young people’s language.

Director of Youth Affairs Cleon Athill explained that the group, comprising young people between the ages of 15 and 22, meets on a weekly basis.

“They meet on a Wednesday and their job basically is to begin to create youth friendly media content and put a youth perspective on what’s happening in the media,” Athill said in an interview.

The aim, Athill said, is to encourage youth involvement in the evolving world of the media.

“Maybe they will be writing for a school-based paper, but it’s to have young people begin to clean up the image of youth in the media,” Athill said.

The UNICEF-funded project saw the training of four young people last year, in television and radio productions as well as journalism and photography.

This was a part of a plan to empower young people, and tool them with the skills necessary to contribute to social dialogue.

“UNICEF is providing support for the project and they are trying to have youth programmes focus on younger youth between the ages of 10 and 14^, because very often, that group is often neglected and what we are finding is that once we focus our programme on the younger youths, by the time they reach mid teens, they will be more informed,” Athill added.