More than 50 young women and men from South Lebanon came together through the Youth Empowerment Project in South Lebanon, funded by UNIFIL and implemented by UNESCO, for a three-day bootcamp focused on Media and Information Literacy (MIL), critical thinking, leadership, and digital verification skills to help youth become more informed, resilient, and engaged members of their communities.
In a context marked by recent crises and ongoing challenges that have affected many of the participants, the bootcamp offered more than technical training. It became a space for young people to reconnect, engage, and rebuild a sense of stability through shared learning and dialogue, where questioning, analyzing, and verifying information became closely linked to resilience and collective recovery.
Across the three days, youth engaged in hands-on sessions on fact-checking, digital verification tools, and content analysis, working directly with real online content to better understand how information is produced, circulated, and sometimes manipulated. Through these practical exercises, they strengthened their ability to assess credibility, identify misinformation, and approach digital content with a more critical and informed perspective.The learning journey moved beyond individual skills into teamwork and action.
Participants collaborated in groups to develop more than 20 youth-led awareness campaigns to combat misinformation and hate speech, transforming knowledge into practical initiatives aimed at promoting responsible information sharing and informed engagement in their communities.
“The training went beyond Media and Information Literacy. It created a space where we felt connected again after everything we had been going through. It brought us together in a meaningful and real way.” Zeinab reflected on the deeper human dimension of the bootcamp, describing it as a space of connection where young people from the South could share experiences, listen to each other, and rebuild a sense of belonging through dialogue and presence.
Through this bootcamp, the Youth Empowerment Project in South Lebanon continues to empower young people in South Lebanon to become critical thinkers who question sources, verify claims before sharing it, and recognize the important role they could play in reducing the spread of disinformation within their communities.
Building on this success, the next steps will focus on establishing a youth network of young leaders committed to countering hate speech and misinformation, while creating safe platforms for dialogue, collaboration, and youth-led initiatives.
read more: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/walk-truth-youth-south-lebanon-strengthen-critical-thinking-and-media-and-information-literacy?hub=701
