Penplusbytes advances Media and Information Literacy in Ghana

Being at the forefront of media and information literacy (MIL) in Ghana for the past three (3) years, Penplusbytes kick starts the 4^th edition of advancing the principles of MIL amongst the youth focusing on vulnerable groups and also to the doorsteps of Ghanaians in the hinterlands.

The ongoing Penplusbytes’ MIL project, funded annually by the DW Akademie with the Media and Information Literacy Learning Initiative (MiLLi*) of the College of the Arts in Namibia as strategic partners, seeks to support and promote the dissemination of skills and competencies of MIL among Ghanaians.

Since its inception, the target audience for this project have primarily been young adults in Ghana between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five (15-35) years with secondary targets being media persons, journalism training schools, persons with disabilities and the general public.

This year’s phase of the project will focus on persons with disabilities (hearing and sight disabilities) and also the general public outside the principal cities of Ghana. Team Penplusbytes will incorporate a mix of audio visuals and traditional media engagement to orient this target group on how to access, analyze, and reflect on their media consumption behaviors and produce media responsibly, ethically and positively. Our online platform www.themedialiteracyhub.org is also being upgraded with user friendly accessibility features such as text-to-speech, video and audio transcriptions, magnifier and contrast themes amongst others.

The project will also develop, test and deploy new MIL training formats and materials for different target groups and also provide young adults who are the core target group, with soft skills to produce, edit and use media content judiciously.

According to the Executive Director of Penplusbytes, Juliet Amoah, “we will leverage on our rich experience in the MIL space and in the deployment of digital tools which we have accumulated over the years implementing this project and other citizen-centered projects, to mobilize and impact young persons with disabilities towards responsible media usage and consumption particularly in this project year.”

As part of the project, Penplusbytes will also lead efforts to coordinate, convene and mark the UNESCO Global MIL week celebration in Ghana in October as have done since 2019, with support from DW Akademie, UNESCO Ghana, the Ghana Commission for UNESCO, the Department of Communication Studies of the University of Ghana and the Ghana Institute of Journalism.