Vuselela Media inspires young South Africans to find their own voices and provides them with a range of media platforms so they can share their stories and participate in public dialogue about the issues that affect them.
Vuselela Media is a non-profit company (NPC) with three main aims:
â€?To train young South Africans, especially those from marginalised and disadvantaged communities, to understand the workings and role of the media, and to become informed, analytical, discerning and active media consumers who can also produce their own content across a variety of media platforms (with a particular focus on mobile technology)
â€?To provide a multi-platform media network that will give young people across South Africa a meaningful voice and the space to share and discuss their similarities and differences so that they can engage with each other and come up with positive solutions about how to deal with their issues and the problems they face in constructive ways.
â€?To use innovative low-cost products and platforms to promote equal education for all.
Vuselela aims to improve the lives of young South Africans through media literacy and access to education.
Vuselela Media has two projects:
Bona Retsang is a community journalism initiative that empowers young people to share their news and stories via a range of media channels. Hyper-local stories are gathered from all nine provinces, 25 community centres and more than 100 schools. This content is used in a television programme called Bona Retsang. Bona Retsang is a 100% youth talk/current affairs magazine series that aims to instil a culture of active citizenship and a do-it-yourself attitude in Mzansi's youth through the promotion of social responsibility, accountability and sound values. In addition, the series reflects on youth issues, opinions and popular culture.
Our second project, MobiSchool, makes it possible for South African high school learners to access free video-based curriculum lessons and tutor support on their mobile phones. The project aims to make quality education not a privilege, but accessible to all South Africans. The project currently engages more than 130,000 high school learners across South Africa.
Bona Retsang Community Journalism Training Course
Vuselela runs a nation-wide media education programme focusing on young people between the ages of 15 and 19. The Bona Retsang training programme gives young South Africans an opportunity to learn storytelling skills that include writing, shooting and editing hyper-local stories about their communities.
Bona Retsang on TV and Social Networks
Vuselela has partnered with television networks and cellphone-based social media sites to develop our youth media network so that young people can share the content they have produced, express their opinions about each otherâ€™s work and engage in debate about the issues theyÂ raise.
Our Youth Media Network
What good is having the tools to create content and express oneself if this content cannot then be shared and interacted with? To this end we have partnered with television networks and cellphone-based social media sites to develop our youth media network so that young people can share the content they have produced, express their opinions about each otherâ€™s work and engage in debate about the issues they raise.
MobiSchool is a new app that makes it possible for all South African high school learners to access free CAPS-aligned audio-visual curriculum lessons, practice activities and tutor support on their cell phones.
Every week, across South Africa, we showcase the best community journalism created by our stringer network of youth based in all 9 provinces of the country.