2025 was a remarkable and at times challenging year for our project work. We celebrated many major milestones, with the launch of several new projects, a focus on youth, innovation, and helping strengthen local media, among many other achievements. Here are some of our project highlights:
YoCojoin’s event “Young Community Journalists: Revitalising Local Media in Europe”, in Brussels in May brought together 67 journalists, mentors, media professionals, and changemakers from across Europe for a full day of discussions, workshops, and youth-led presentations. Panels explored the challenges of local journalism, including news deserts, structural vulnerabilities, and the need for EU-level support, while workshops centred on the role of young journalists in local newsrooms. A highlight of the event was a showcase panel where young YoCoJoin reporters presented their stories.
Media Diversity Institute Global trained 10 young journalists on the importance of youth community journalism and continued mentoring six of them as they developed stories closely connected to their values, backgrounds, the challenges their communities face, and their motivation to create small but meaningful change. The stories covered a range of topics including the impact of Russian influence on Georgia’s democratic path toward the EU, the challenges refugees face within Belgium’s asylum system and why homelessness sector needs to listen to women with lived experience.
YoCoJoin released the YoCoJoin Workbook: Empowering Youth in Local Journalism, which contains the key lessons of the 24-month project and offers practical methods for engaging and training youth in journalism, tools and templates for collaborative content production, real-world examples from young reporters and mentors, and strategies to make youth community journalism sustainable in diverse contexts. The Workbook is aimed at local media organisations, educators, and youth workers.
YoCoJoin held the workshop “Reimagining local news with youth” at the Voices – European Festival of Journalism and Media Freedom in Croatia in March, talking about best practices for engaging and empowering young people in community media.
