The new age of digital activism ft. Timok Youth Center (2019)

An increasingly present problem is how much young people spend time on the Internet, but what is also important is how they actually spend their time and what content they consume there. Research that has been done has confirmed that young people mostly use the Internet for private purposes, for communication and in search of entertainment content. From all this, it is claimed that young people mostly "waste" their time on the Internet. Also, digital literacy is not sufficiently developed, as shown by the data that more than half of the respondents do not know what a cloud, https protocol and backup system is.

For that reason, in cooperation with the Timok Youth Center, we launched a project that dealt with the problem of young people on the Internet and consuming content that is mainly used for entertainment. The idea was not to separate them from the Internet, but to bring them closer to the topic of digital activism and explain how the time they spend on the Internet or social networks can change their lives, as well as that they be the initiators of these changes.

The project involved young people between 15 and 30 years old, who through training on programming and promotion on social networks were provided with useful tools for using the Internet, but also for the good of their community because such tools could be used to gather the digital community around someone. common problem.

Out of a total of 62 applicants, of which 15 girls were selected, as many as could be physically accommodated in the Timok Youth Center, where programming workshops were held with the help of Rails Girls - a global initiative that aims to educate and empower as many girls as possible in IT industry. The workshop dealt with the basics of programming using the Ruby programming language. Ruby on Rails, or Rails for short, is an open platform for rapid web application development based on the Ruby programming language.

A series of webinars with interesting and professional guests from relevant fields was recorded, as well as a workshop on social media marketing.