News Generation Against Hate: Empowering La Courneuve youth to create alternative narratives and champion diversity in the media

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BACKGROUND

The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) is committed to engaging with municipalities, which are often on the frontlines of challenges linked to intercultural and interreligious tensions that may erupt within diverse communities. Implemented in collaboration with the municipality of La Courneuve (Paris area, France), the project “News Generation Against Hate” equipped young people with the tools to combat misinformation, hate speech, and stereotypes by promoting intercultural and interreligious understanding in the media. Since 2021, the project has engaged forty youth from La Courneuve between the ages of 16 and 24 to help them deconstruct stereotypes rooted in a lack of exposure to diverse cultures and religions. Through workshops and capacity-building activities, participants acquired storytelling techniques and competencies to promote mutual understanding and respect for the other. Moreover, through the production of media content such as videos and radio podcasts, participants learned to recognize and address misinformation and discrimination in the media. Led by a group of experienced facilitators, they produced alternative narratives and multimedia content covering local and national issues related to multiculturalism, becoming active actors and partners of social change.

OVERVIEW

Having finalized their capacity-building training and having produced their projects on alternative narratives, the youth participants will be traveling to New York, where they will present their achievements at the United Nations Headquarters on Wednesday, 4 May.

Through this component of the ‘News Generation Against Hate’ project, UNAOC seeks to empower the youth participants from the Municipality of La Courneuve by providing them with a platform for dialogue previously inaccessible to them. UNAOC will directly contribute to amplifying youth representation and thus allow them to have a voice in decisions that affect them, in line with the United Nations Secretary-General 2021 Report, ‘Our Common Agenda’.

Moreover, this will also constitute a unique opportunity for UNAOC to showcase the potential of working with local youth in collaboration with municipalities – an approach that is replicable across the board, in line with UNAOC’s wider strategy of working with cities and local governments to mobilize action at the community level.