Rosa Koian is a journalist and development specialist. She has worked as a journalist and editor for Wantok Niuspepa, the only Tok Pisin newspaper, and has worked with various civil society groups in the environmental sector for many years. For the last 10 years, she has been actively working with university students and young people in various training and mentoring initiatives. Recently, she ran 3 trainings on disinformation for young journalists and church communication producers in Papua New Guinea.

IVLP Impact Award Project: Media Literacy for Change

Rosa’s project improved literacy levels and helped younger generations and their teachers learn how to utilize digital media tools to be more educational. The project organized several training workshops to educate the youth on media literacy, message coding, social media safety, and many more prevalent technological topics. To complement the workshops, two practical activities were designed to support the training materials, such as the students teaching the students how to use social media to produce videos on climate change from notes they had taken in school. There were also two workshop sessions held for teachers and staff that taught them potential training interventions to aid the youth. Overall, this project trained 57 people in media literacy, and posts on social media, mainly LinkedIn, garnered over 3000 views.

"I... hope that this initiative will help the education system in Papua New Guinea take up social media as a unit of study and as a medium for delivering learning for teachers." - Rosa Koian

IVLP Exchange Experience 

Rosa was a participant in the IVLP Project Countering Disinformation in the Pacific organized by the U.S. Department of State and Cultural Vistas in partnership with the World Trade Center Institute, International Citizen Diplomacy of Los Angeles, Northern Nevada International Center, Iowa International Center and Global Ties San Francisco.

Rosa's exchange experience led to the development of her IVLP Impact Award Project: "Monica from the Center for Media Literacy inspired me as I was thinking already about a media literacy [training] in Papua New Guinea. "

U.S. Communities Visited

Los Angeles, CA; San Francisco, CA; Washington, DC; Des Moines, IA; Baltimore, MD; Reno, NV

Country: Papua New Guinea

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