Giving Youth a Free Space to Learn at Media Lab

Dear Friends, Donors and Supporters:

With your continuous support and well wishes, our Media Lab continues to provide not just the necessary tools and equipment for our youth but also an enabling environment for all of us to build a community. We have been able to carry out various activities over these past 3 months at the Media Lab and some of the activities have resulted in bringing about social changes and an emergence of the first ever Youth Parliament initiative in Bhutan.

These are some of the brief overview of our activities carried out at the Media Lab:

• Community Mapping Follow up, (August-October): In an ambitious effort to map 5 different communities in Thimphu, the community mapping project which involved 25 youths earlier in July ended successfully with all of our youth partners learning the skills to map communities, find not just the problems in those communities but also solutions to those problems. In doing so, they also learnt to appreciate the good things about the communities. As a follow up on the workshop, we carried out two meetings at the Media Lab with our youth partners, the Royal Bhutan Police (RBP) and the residents from the communities to work towards the formation of a Neighborhood Watch Group. We are currently working with the Royal Bhutan Police, Youth workers, concerned stakeholders and our youth to present the concept of Neighborhood Watch Group to the communities in Thimphu. Once we have developed a strategy with our stakeholders, we will be carrying out an orientation program for the residents and present to them the concept of Neighborhood Watch Group. (Check out the Community Mapping Video) We are also preparing for an exhibition of the workshop at the Media Lab. 
• Creative writing session (August): Two leading journalists from India, Sathya Saran and Ratnottama Sengupta, led a short but insightful, creative writing workshop at the Media Lab for 12 youths, journalists and nonprofit workers. The workshop discussed how to structure articles creatively, from hooking the reader at the beginning to leaving enduring messages at the end. Participants then worked on short exercises to build their descriptive capacity to ‘show and not tell’. The participants were also encouraged to practice their writing through blogging.  
• Building Community (August-September): As a part of our community building activities at the Media Lab, we screened a film ‘The Trotsky’ a comedy about a youth who, thinking he is the reincarnation of Russian Revolutionary Leon Trostky, tries to mobilize students in his high school to unionize. The screening was followed by discussion among the participants. We also hosted a youth discussion forum on a series of learnings to strengthen community. This focused on the first habit of the heart that recognises the interdependence of all things, persons, and situations. During the forum, we reflected on how we can create a society that embeds the truth of inter-connectedness more deeply and fully. The habits of the heart is adapted from the book ‘The Heart of Democracy’ by Parker J. Palmer and then reframed to Bhutanese context. After the youth discussion we carried on with one of our open mic nights.  
• Commemorating International Democracy Day (September 15): We conducted a forum themed ‘Taking Social Action for Social Change’ to highlight the importance of initiative of regular citizens in addressing social needs in the country. More than 70 students and recent graduates filled the lab when they attended the forum. We had young entrepreneurs and social workers talk to our participants about their experience and the kind of work they do and why they do it. The 7 winners of BCMD’s Social Action Project challenge were announced at the forum. The challenge invited citizens to put forward proposals for innovative grassroots projects that addressed a social problem. BCMD will be learning from the projects to evluate how they help to strengthen youth engagement. 
• Media sensitization for Gewog Administrative Officers (GAOs): BCMD conducted two workshops on ‘Media Sensitisation’ for GAOs on 29^th September and 6^th October 2013. Both the workshops were a three-day workshop where the final day of both the workshops were conducted at the Media Lab to sentisise the GAOs about social media, citizen journalism and creating and/or writing a blog.
• Youth parlaiment Initiative: The Media Lab has helped to incubate and inspire ideas for a proposed youth        parliament, which BCMD is supporting as an initiative. Two of our youth partners, Phub Dorji and Kencho Dorji, high school graduates, presented their ideas at the lab on the proposed Youth Parliament. School principals, teachers, representatives from Election Commission of Bhutan (ECB) and youth social workers attended the discussions at the media lab. BCMD is supporting the piloting of the first ever Youth Parliament in the country. We will be providing the Media Lab as a space for the youths to come together and work on this initiative. A training workshop is being planned to begin in winter to train members of the Youth Parliament to give them the skills required to carry on this initiative such as debating and dialogue, mapping of youth priorities, policy planning and investigative/citizen journalism skills.

We thank you for your continuous support that has enabled BCMD to continue inspiring youth people in Bhutan to have a voice and become advocates for social change.