The goal of CREDIBLE is to transform the way people interact with their information environment, creating resilience to mis- and disinformation and ultimately empowering youth to engage in fact-based discourse and decision-making.

This five-year USAID-funded project will strengthen information ecosystems and shift norms around information engagement by building media and digital literacy by energizing local media and the broader information space with youth voices and perspectives. To accomplish this, IREX works together with Entrena (Dominican Republic), Paz Joven (Guatemala), CEDRO (Peru), and Laboratoria (Peru), leveraging IREX's approaches such as Learn to Discern (L2D), Vibrant Information Barometer (VIBE),  and Organizational Performance Improvement (OPI) to empower local actors to address informational challenges in their own societies and encourage more informed, productive, and inclusive civil discourse.

• Low news reliability, increasing use of social media, and low trust in governments have enabled foreign and domestic actors in Latin America and the Caribbean to undermine democratic principles through information influence operations.
• Disinformation has an outsize impact on youth. Youth are the most active users of social media and messaging platforms and use these platforms as their principal source of information.
• Constant exposure to complex and coordinated disinformation campaigns, hate speech, and polarizing politics are leading to heightened social discontent and decreased civic engagement among youth, with many retreating into online echo chambers, detached from their communities.

CREDIBLE Fact Sheet

• Holistic framework tackling supply and demand of information: By improving young people’s media consumption behaviors (demand) and the capacity of actors to produce youth relevant media content (supply), CREDIBLE and its partners leverage their ability to impact the information ecosystem in an integral way.

• Innovative interventions model: Rooted in a positive youth development approach, the program is designed to support a process of co-creation, testing, and evaluation of each intervention as a pilot. This will allow CREDIBLE and its partners to scale the interventions, leveraging their potential for impact and strategical growth, and making it cost effective while partners improve their internal processes.

• Following the Learn to Discern approach, CREDIBLE provides youth in Guatemala, Peru, and the Dominican Republic with tools to reflect on their own information consumption habits, understand their cognitive and emotional biases and improve their digital media literacy skills. Ultimately, this empowers them to create initiatives that promote positive community social norms for civic engagement in their information ecosystem.
• Engage local media, particularly young journalists and local youth influencers, with their communities to produce quality content, and lead others in positive local norms around civic responsibility, civic engagement, and information.

YOUTH AND EDUCATION PARTNERS

• Guatemala: in Huehuetenango, Paz Joven trains highschoolers from indigenous communities on how to remain resilient to manipulative information and understand how information manipulation can impact behavior and their relationship with the information ecosystem.
• Peru: CEDRO trains high school tutors how to navigate information overload and engage with media in positive ways. CREDRO’s  curriculum combines the L2D learning framework with the soft skills that the national curriculum establishes as part of the tutoring hours program.
• Dominican Republic: ENTRENA trains young leaders from communities at risk and combines their methodology of accelerated learning, with their curricula on Life Skills and L2D competencies. The learning groups are managed by young leaders who have been coached by ENTRENA through a Training of Trainers (ToT) program.
• Regional: Laboratoria, a women-lead organization, teaches technology skills to other young women so they are prepared to enter the workforce. They utilize information discernment competency training at their own pace to navigate the job market to their self-paced e-learning environment.

MEDIA PARTNERS

• Guatemala: Plaza Publica delivers workshops to teach university students (from four different cities in Guatemala) how to identify information manipulation and how to generate quality content in their communities.
  • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Laboratorio de Medios helps community journalists and young content creators to become more resilient to information manipulation by reflecting on their own information consumption patterns, improving their media literacy skills and employing other elements of journalism. Through a mentorship program, young journalists will develop content that verifies disinformation, identifies and halts manipulative information initiatives, and caters to the needs and interest of young people in their communities.
• Peru: OjoPúblico trains young content creators in fact checking and debunking practices. They will gain essential media literacy skills in addition to a holistic view on resilience to information manipulation. Some of the creators will also engage in an in-person challenge that is designed to test their ability to adapt and apply what they learned to create engaging and viral content for their social media platforms. 

• Laura Agosta, Chief of Party | lagosta@irex.org
• Nick Ebert, Senior Program Officer | nebert@irex.org
• Diana Rodriguez, Program Officer | drodriguez@irex.org
• Christine Doherty, Program Associate | cdoherty@irex.org
• Katya Vogt, MIL | kvogt@irex.org
• Joy Amulya | jamulya@irex.org
• Tara Susman-Peña | tsusmanpena@irex.org