Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change

Media Change Makers

Since helping to launch the program in 2007, Salzburg Global President Stephen L. Salyer has taken a hands-on role in the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change: helping to devise the program, delivering lectures and mentoring students. This year, he met with student representatives from each region represented at the eighth annual program to find out how the Academy is helping shape them.

You’re nearly at the end of your time at the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change; what are your thoughts so far?

Tony: For me the Academy is like dropping me into a sea. In the sea you have of all types of creatures; in the Academy you have all types of people; all manners of looking at things, articulating whatever they understand, and basically, for me, it has changed the way I think. It has taught me to listen rather than talk. I used to talk a lot but I have realized that there are people who think better than me. And for me, that’s a plus because whenever I find somebody who does better than me, I listen to them and pick out something from them. For me, I think the Seminar has given a voice to the voiceless. We are the voiceless, truth be told. What we say used to remain within our lecture rooms, back home. Anything you say today goes to 72 different people, 23 different countries. Which other forum will you get to talk directly to the UNDP officials if it not this? I think we, as the youth, have the ideas; we just need a forum to raise our voices.

Eduardo: I think the term “life changing experience” is thrown around very lightly, but this truly is, in a way, very life changing. It doesn’t just change things like your idea of diversity, it also changes your idea of teamwork, for example, because I think most of us here are kind of leaders and you’re not really used to working with four other leaders. So it happens, as Tony says – you have to shut up for a while and just start listening. And it also changes the idea where you can apply your abilities; I had never thought about working for an NGO before coming here.

What type of projects are you involved in at home?

Patrick: I have always tried to be involved in reporting as a means of tackling injustice and holding power to account. Before I was here, I spent a month in Vietnam making a film about unexploded bombs and how they are still affecting people. There isn’t enough money coming from places like the United States, who can spend billions arming various militaries around the world and calling it aid, but at the same time only giving several million pounds to Vietnam to clean up some of the bombs they left there, which are still killing people. It’s a story you really don’t hear about much. That’s the sort of thing I like to be involved in.

Sarah: Sarah: In America right now there is a big epidemic of rape and sexual assault on college campuses. As a survivor of sexual assault on a college campus and as a survivor advocate, I have become really involved with working with Emerson College’s faculty and administration. I have also worked with activists on other college campuses and around the country to get the White House to take action in creating new bills and in Congress on a national scale to address the epidemic of sexual assault. I have created sexual assault survivor support groups. I have worked with Emerson to change policy, not to victim blame in resources that they hand out to survivors.

We’ve talked a lot here about the power of shaming and how powerful that can be – shaming a government that has corruption in it, for example – and what that can do to make governments change. If you shame a university or a college about not treating survivors of sexual assault and rape correctly by giving survivors the space to come forward in a public way, colleges whip themselves into shape pretty fast and start making changes. I think the media is a powerful tool to get the word out there and to educate the community about issues that are existing, which may have been pushed under the rug before. This is something that I am learning about a lot at the Academy, and something I am going to use more and more when I go back to Emerson and continue in this movement.

Balquees: I have created an online magazine and a printed magazine. With the magazine we used to do some social activism. Since I went to university, I have been engaged more in community service events and culture events rather than media. I was the media coordinator of the Saudi culture club in our university and two months ago I became the president of it. We have so many Saudi students in my university, the American University of Sharjah, and we are trying to use them to create social acts, such as a campaign last month. I have had this notebook since I came here, in which I am writing what ideas come to mind for using media to create a change, or to empower some aspects that I want to change. I am going to take it back home and encourage more students to get involved, and make them believe anew that we can create change.

Eduardo: Right now I have two projects; one of them is a website where the main objective is to upload a story, an article talking about a social issue. It could be a community that is far away and is isolated in some way; it can be an oppressed group, even a personal story. The objective is to crowdfund the stories to make a small documentary featurette. The other one, which is a little bit more advanced, is a website where I put together articles, interviews, videos talking about the situation for the LGBT community right now in Mexico. My aim is to create a community where you can show people who have never been in touch with someone openly gay that they are people just like anyone else.

What overriding message will you be taking away from the Academy?

Aupala: If we are going to have change, it will take small, small steps but it will continue and continue. I think that right now – where I am living, the time I’m living in – I want to be one of those people who do make some change at least. At a very nominal level, one major thing I can say in my daily life that will change is that I will definitely use social media in a very different way than I used to.

Sarah: I think that the biggest takeaway from here is the power of a global network. I don’t think that you can really fix any issues unless you hear the other side of the issue and unless you understand what will work in all different communities, for people of all different backgrounds. Now I have connections with people in Mexico, Argentina, Kenya, India, I will be able to use them as resources. I don’t think that would have happened unless I came here.

Patrick: I think that the message is “just go for it,” do your best, try to change the world, be that voice for the voiceless, be that person who is asking awkward questions to the authorities and do whatever you can to get those messages out because it can be done, and we have seen some very inspirational people who are doing that. To me it’s a complete kick up the backside, to put it bluntly.

For further information, please see: media-academy.SalzburgGlobal.org