By Nicai de Guzman

Photo by Regina Layug-Rosero

Select students from non-government organizations participated in Mulat Pinoy’s one-day workshop on analyzing media stories and creating content for social media users.

Nine young people, aged 15 to 21 years old, learned the basics of online media production from Mulat Pinoy’s coordinators, Dante Gagelonia and Regina Layug Rosero. The students came from partner organizations all over Manila, namely Youth Meets the Children, Baluti, and the Children and Youth Organization.

The goal of the workshop was to engage young people in social media discussions about population and development, and to encourage them to contribute content on youth-oriented issues in the Mulat Pinoy site.

Gagelonia discussed the qualities of a good media story while Rosero shared the power of social media. Both lectures were followed by activities to gauge the understanding of the participants.

“Now we know the proper way to write blogs,” said Rowie Tarroza from Baluti. Ramel Cervantes, also from Baluti, said that he learned about choosing the right focus of his articles. “And I also learned that you should always think of your target audience or readers,” Cervantes added.

Anthony Lopez, who was a former reporter of Kabataan News Network, was also inspired to make his podcasts more interesting to his listeners. “When I was in KNN, we get a lot of inputs from our managers, but now I make podcasts on my own. I admit that I’m not good in making things interesting so I am determined to make my podcasts easier to understand,” said Lopez.

Jayvee Datoy from Youth Meets the Children promised to apply what he learned when he uses his social media accounts like Facebook, and that he will share what he learned with the other young people in his organization.

The workshop was held in the Mulat Pinoy headquarters in Quezon City on November 24.