A total of 57 participants attended the trainings, including NGO representatives, journalists, as well as journalist interns. Representatives from 10 NGOs (FOSIM, Center for Sustainable Community Development – Debar, Citizens’Association “Regional Center for Sustainable Development”, Nikulec, Center for Local Development – Antigonea, Youth Education Forum, MCET, itSMF Macedonia, Association for Protection of Children’s Rights, IN ART Citizens’ Association Skopje) from several cities from Macedonia: Negotino, Debar, Kratovo and Skopje. All of the trainings were one-day trainings, except one which was divided into 2 days, and covered the following topics:

  • e-content introduction
  • Getting familiar with the types of social media
  • Website analysis
  • Online privacy
  • Copyright and Creative Commons
  • The role of advocacy blogs in the work of the NGOs
  • Creating, running and administering a blog
  • Multimedia usage
  • Basics of web promotion

The training attendants created their own blogs and acquired the knowledge for administering their blogs in the future, and for filling the blog with various types of multimedia content and promotion. The blogs were created on the Blogspot blog-platform due to its simple administration interface, and at the end of each training, the participants were also presented with the Macedonian blog-platform Blogeraj, how to use it, and its advantages and differences compared to the former. The participants were also familiarized with some of the social networking media which they can use to promote their own blogs and to share the created contents with more readers.

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The analysis of their current websites, in terms of the proper highlighting, accessibility and usability of the various types of contents on their website, was an additional value for the training attendants.
The blogging trainings were conducted within the frames of the project Inciting local e-content, implemented by the Metamorphosis Foundation. The trainings were conducted by Irina Shumadieva and Elena Ignatova.
The training attendants can check their own knowledge by using the Online multimedia manual (in Macedonian), which should be published by the Metamorphosis Foundation during the next few months. This manual will be publicly available for everyone, so that other trainers and end users can also use it.
Previously, within the frames of this project, a series of trainings for digital storytelling and usage of the Global Voices and Wikipedia websites were held for students of the Faculty of Philology.

The digital storytelling trainings were conducted in partnership with the British Council and Cre8ive8, at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. The first three trainings lasted two and a half days, whereas the last one was held during a period of 2 weeks, with 9-day sessions of 3 hours each. A total of 31 participants from 4 NGOs participated at these trainings (The First Children’s Embassy in the World – Megjashi, Sumnal, Analytica, and Doverba. As a result of these trainings, a total of 27 digitalized stories were created by the participants, out of which the last three are published on the Metamorphosis website and translated into English.

The digital storytelling trainings familiarized the participants with the basics for working with graphics, audio and video editing software, through a creative process of creating digital 2-5 minute multimedia videos. In these products, the participants shared part of their experiences by narration and usage onaf photographs, sounds, songs and videos.

The trainings for usage of the Global Voices and Wikipedia websites were attended by 10 seniors from the Faculty of Philology – Department of Translation and Interpreting (English language), in order to actively include them in the translation of these websites. 2 one-day trainings (4 hours each) were conducted for this purpose.

As part of the project for inciting local e-content, 15 trainings of various types were organized so far, attended by 108 participants from different ethnic communities, engaged in the work of 14 NGOs and 2 higher education institutions.

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