The Politeracy Project - Interview with Integriti and YWC

When young, passionate people are given access to digital tools and skills, they are empowered and enabled to become positive change agents, social advocates and vibrant partakers in active citizenship which in turn, contributes to a more progressive society. The political literacy project dubbed ‘Politeracy’ project is an initiative of Integriti Technologies partnering with Yes We Can Youth Leadership Initiative (YWC) which recognizes the digital gap between rural and urban youths and aims to bridge this technological divide by promoting digital skills in tandem with political literacy and participation among youth across ten rural communities in Enugu state.

During the interview, Integriti/YWC team consisting of Uchenna Ani and John Anukwu, talked about the important role liaison officers play by acting as middlemen between the community leaders and the rightsholders (targeted youths). These liaison officers are members of the various communities who are selected from a pool of community volunteers nominated for the position. The selected volunteers are screened through a series of interviews, and then engaged for the project. Integriti/YWC also highlighted the importance of community gatekeepers towards achieving their learning goals.

Cognito/NINE: “The first learning question is, what is the best approach and methodology to mobilize the youths in the rural areas? How have you been able to answer that question?”

Integriti/YWC: In mobilizing our rightsholders (youth), we found out that without engaging the gatekeepers, community entry would have been futile. So, one of the things we did first was to engage the gatekeepers of each of the communities, and apart from the gatekeepers, we also engaged the liaison officers. You know, these are the people who help us to interphase with the respective leaders of the communities to mobilize our rightsholders. I think this is just one of the basic things we did; getting the liaison officers. They are members of the communities and they have access to the Igwe (Chief) and the rest of them, so this is how we were able to mobilize the rightsholders.

Cognito/NINE: ‘How do you get your rightsholders to create and maintain an active social platform for socio-political engagements?’

Integriti/YWC: Through this project, we’ve been able to show our youths how to create their own social media handles. The next thing is understanding the ethics of, you know, being online and being on social media - things they need to observe, understanding online threats, identifying fake news etc. They’ve also learnt how to design e-flyers and banners. Having taught them these important things, we’ve tried to make them see that there are better things they could do online than posting pictures. So, I believe that as we engage them more actively on our WhatsApp platform, we can get them to participate more actively and become more involved. We believe that even after the project these youths will continue to maintain their online engagement, because the youth have passion.