"Association of Young Journalists" NGO, Armenia

From the beginning of 2011 “Association of Young Journalists” NGO has continuously organized different trainings, conferences, debates, round tables and other events for youth both in journalism and social sciences. The main goal of our organization is to promote non-formal education of youth, especially young journalists in Armenia. To achieve our goal we are organizing workshops, promoting the development of civil society, collaborating with other organizations and etc. We have more than 50 members. They are students and lecturers of Faculty of Journalism of Yerevan State University and other universities. We already cooperate with the "Young Biologists Association" NGO of Armenia, "International Center for Intercultural Research, Learning and Dialogue" NGO, Yerevan State University, "Debate Club of YSU" and other organizations. We attach great importance to cooperation with non-governmental organizations of other countries and to implement joint projects. Starting from 2015 March we’re organizing “Memories from battle front” together with the cooperation with Armenian Youth Foundation. We’re filming 20 short and 1 long movies about World War II, which are being broadcasted on “Yerkir Media” TV Channel in the frames of the very project mentioned above. We’ve realized the project “Armenian-German Journalism School” together with the cooperation German “Die Tageszeitung” (taz.de) newspaper, Armenian youth Foundation and Yerevan State University, where 60 journalists from different Armenian universities and regions have got the chance to get involved into the project. During this project, they have got familiar with the advantages of German printing media, radio, TV, as well as online media advantages both theoretically and practically. There have been made different journalistic publications, which has been shared over the Armenian media. The second part of the project took place in Berlin, where 8 journalists have taken part in professional workshops and made publications on special number of “Die Tageszeitung”. In 2014, the NGO realized the conference “I sign” together with the cooperation of Armenian Youth Foundation, where more than 30 journalists had got familiar with the journalism legal and ethical responsibilities, as well as the basics of media’s civil society improvement process. The organization has been involved into the training course «EYE-World-Video-Hearth» (Youth in Action project) as an expert by «International Center for Intercultural Research, Learning and Dialogue» NGO. That was in 2013. In 2012, a debate club founded under our organization together with the cooperation of YSU Journalism Faculty, which is still going on, giving decade of youngsters to debate around the topics of journalism and other social sciences. Debate also serves as an alternative method of education and gives the youngsters the very opportunity of gaining new skills in different aspects.