Media Literacy Across Caribbean Generations

Building on previous IPDC and PMA efforts in the region, the “Strengthening Media Literacy Across Generations in the Caribbean” project aims to both increase and sustain media and information literacy (MIL) initiatives across the Caribbean by building capacity and much-needed collaboration among media organisations, universities, and libraries.

The project expands previous foci to include older generations — a group that engages more frequently with fake news, is under-researched, and whose exposure to media literacy efforts are minimal. The initiative – supported by the UNESCO Caribbean Office and UNESCO’s International Programme for International Development (IPDC) — will empower stakeholders in Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago to develop and implement community-driven and age-specific MIL initiatives, that lay the foundation for sustained regional collaboration to improve news, media, and digital literacy across generations.

The project comprises several core activities:

• Training workshops: In each country, there will be a three-day workshop to train stakeholders across media, universities, and libraries on audience-specific strategies, ethical MIL practice, and designing their own collaborative MIL project.
• Media Literacy Lab: A one-day virtual session that brings together the project’s MIL Champions, an executive group of 24 of those previously trained across the three countries. This session develops and refines the MIL Champions’ age-specific initiatives (schoolchildren and older populations) with peer feedback to strengthen cross-border engagement. The Media Literacy Lab will be followed by mentoring to refine the country teams’ initiatives.
• MIL Action Day: Each country’s MIL Champions pilot their MIL projects in-country with their target audience, reaching younger and older generations.
• Impact evaluation session: The project culminates in an impact evaluation session to assess outcomes and impact of the Action Days and wider project; share challenges, opportunities, and key learnings, including lessons for adaptation and scaling; and identify sustainability steps and opportunities for cross-border collaboration.

In recent years, the Caribbean has benefited from MIL initiatives, including research on dis- and misinformation and trust in news, and a project that focused on building the next generation of media literate citizens by targeting schoolchildren, educators, and media professionals. As part of the latter initiative, stakeholders, during a December 2024 consultation, called for an expansion of the target audience, and have especially emphasised the need to focus on older generations.

The project directly responds to stakeholders’ call and interests, and also considers four interlinked needs and issues.

1. MIL is not yet fully embedded across education, media, and library sectors, and is often viewed as supplementary rather than a core competency, with limited continuous training, weak policy integration, and underinvestment.
2. Media organisations, universities, and libraries frequently work in isolation, with few frameworks or incentives for cross-sector dialogue, resource-sharing, or sustained collaboration.
3. The media literacy divide between generations is widening: older populations are under-researched, have minimal exposure to MIL/DMIL initiatives, face digital access barriers, and are particularly vulnerable to targeted mis- and disinformation.
4. There is insufficient practical knowledge on how to leverage cross-border, multi-stakeholder collaboration to harmonise MIL strategies, share best practices, and scale age-specific, community-driven models across the Caribbean.

Project activities will commence in June 2026 and run until November 2026.