In the time of the “mindfulness” and e-democracy, young people are faced with problems of operating facts and may often be subjected to distorted, false information.

That is why it is important for us to prevent the danger in the information field, to teach young people to consider and make the right decisions, guided by qualitative arguments, to consider the situation from different sides.

Everyone should get acquainted with the principles of debate in order to be able to correctly convey their views to the public, solve existing problems, see the interests of the parties and come to a joint decision in a democratic way.

YMCA Lviv again turned into a public platform for all young people to express their thoughts and views about local and regional changes.The project has become a great opportunity to present values, opportunities, and therefore to join active, creative volunteers together.

YMCA Lviv has become a platform where you can express your views, transfer valuable experience both for the younger generation and for experienced teachers and trainers. Thus, the project received a wide resonance, focusing on the skills of fact-checking, critical thinking, eliminating prejudices of human intelligence, filtering the information field and identifying fake. Also, there was an understanding of the principles of democracy and its protection (fakcheking, counteracting manipulation and populism).

The school has invited high-quality trainers, among them: a teacher of political science Ivan Franko LNU  Andriy Garbadyn, public activist and business coach in the field of management Svyatoslav Stets, blogger Andriy Gorbunov, assistant of the department of new media and journalist of the portal Lviv.com Tetyana Pavlichenko, Editor-in-Chief of Dyvys.Info Valeria Pechenyk, a well-known Lviv journalist and editor, Natalia Voitovich.

Results:

• 92-young people involved with gained medialiteracy skills
• 23,000 active social networking and social actions
• 2-day program workshop
• 1 final video for further project promotion
•  1 team of young political scientists and journalists for the implementation of the following Media Literacy Schools

The project helped YMCA Lviv expand the field of opportunity by adding media literacy and critical thinking to one of the areas of activity and cooperation. Now we have new tools (for example, social networking) to create focus groups and research the interests and needs of young people in the community.

Such projects develop a sense of responsibility among young people for changes and decisions in the local community.

YMCA Lviv never stops.Young Council plans to continue the project by creating periodic seasonal schools with a specific theme, publishing popular science magazines, holding joint conferences and lectures, scientific readings, creating educational videos that will teach critical thinking and media literacy on-line. The School of Critical Thinking only confirms that it brings not only learning from practical skills and theoretical knowledge, but also satisfaction).