The second phase of the Media Literacy campaign, developed by the AMA, has been successfully completed. Thematically entitled, ‘Media Literacy Competence for Preschool Ages’, designed and run by the AMA’s Council of Complaints, this campaign was conceived as a series of informative and awareness-raising conversations with parents and educators targeted at preschool children aged 5-6 years.
Due to the peculiarities of their age development and the need for orientation in the media and digital world, on the eve of an important step in their lives, such as schooling, the second phase of Media Education by AMA is concentrated in 20 kindergartens, extended at all the administrative units of Tirana. In every kindergarten where the AMA teams have been, informative and educational talks, conversations with parents, grandparents and educators present were organized, informative videos realized by AMA have been broadcast and materials published to this end were distributed. Special attention was paid to the need to orient the child in the audiovisual environment and the use of protective mechanisms for their physical and mental health, exercise of parental control over the child’s presence and behaviour on the Internet, ways of limiting time of the child on-line, their protection from cyber risks, etc.
Upon conclusion of this phase, 425 participants were present during these weeks, of which: 12% educators; 14% grandparents and 74% parents, of which 16% are fathers
The general concerns expressed by the stakeholders present were mainly related to bad habits as a result of parenting lack of time; negative environmental impact; malfunction of some on-line control mechanisms (e.g. YouTube Kids) for the Albanian territory; regular non-use of warning signs from TV, etc.
At every meeting, the attendees have expressed interest and requested more information about the features of the proper use of the Internet, the importance of protecting personal data in digital environments, as well as the means of protection against the cyberspace risks, etc.
For the realization of this project, in order to guarantee effectiveness and geographical distribution, AMA relied on the cooperation of the General Directorate of Nurseries and Kindergartens of the Tirana Municipality.
