Herald – centre for informal education and media development

The discovery of modern teaching methods, the establishment of informal education, and raising awareness on media literacy is an incomplete list of issues on which the educational research centre “Herald” is working. Established in 2016, it has been a popular and exciting space for students in Rustavi for the seventh year. As the founder Nino Sophromadze tells us, here, young people from Rustavi and not only from Rustavi have the opportunity to develop various skills, introduce innovative education methods and achieve success.

Founder  – Nino Sophromadze and co-founder  – Davit Tsintsadze have many years of experience working in television. To share the knowledge gained during their work in television with the new generation, they moved to the educational space and today they are already implementing projects in the mentioned field.

Meet the Herald” is one of the first projects implemented by the centre. In cooperation with the European Union and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, meetings were held with students, a photo exhibition was organized, where their works on the topics of informal education were presented to the public.

“Herald” team is proud to mention that Kvemo Kartli was the first to start talking about media literacy. In this direction, a number of events were organized for students, parents and teachers in Rustavi and Marneuli.

Citizens saw the role of the media and the value of a media-literate person in a different light. In 2021, a book titled “Media Awareness”, covering the given theme, was published. The students prepared the information resources themselves.

Nino Sophromadze tells us that the activities of “Herald” are focused on the interests of the new generation. An expression of the latter is one of the projects within which the students themselves chose the teacher they wanted and invited him to the center. Nino considers that the project “Artificial Intelligence and Education” implemented in cooperation with the American Corner of Rustavi and Marneuli proved to be fruitful.

“There are many intelligent, creative and critical-thinking young people in today’s technological age. They have access to a large number of educational resources but the same cannot be said about the availability of learning the skills necessary for facilitating this knowledge and self-realization.  Also, we are aimed to help all interested people to discover their own strength and share it with others and thus promote the development of common well-being,” says Nino Sophromadze.

Davit Tsintsadze, co-founder of “Herald”  tells us about the two-year project, which gave students the opportunity to prepare the TV programs themselves. In this process, they developed journalistic and cameraman skills. Finally, thirteen programs made by the students saw the light of day on the regional television screen.

Davit Tsintsadze also singled out “Interfield” from the projects, within the framework of which students conducted lectures on various topics. It turned out to be a new challenge for them.  They managed it well and mastered public speaking skills.

“Herald” offers Georgian and English language courses to the public.

It is worth noting that the students were able to use the knowledge gained in this centre. There are those who have created projects themselves and currently work on their own.

Despite of the fact that years have passed since the establishment of “Herald”, Nino Sophromadze underlines that during this period “the projects have not been repeated, only the goals remain the same”.  They do have many ideas and plans and their objective is to support the new generation in self-realization.

“ The objective of “Herald” is the personal development of young people, which often is not paid due attention during the educational process.  We remember that civilization was created by the people who can think out of the box and this is impossible without personal strength” – says Davit Tsintsadze.

Author: Guranda Phutkaraya

Azerbaijani translation: Chichak Guseynova

English translation: Tamar Cherkezishvili

 The article was created with the support of the Civil Society Institute, within the framework of the project " Civil Society Initiative: Sustainable, Open and Accountable Civil Society, Organizations for the Development of Georgia" funded by the European Union and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Kvemo Kartli Media is fully responsible for its content and it may not reflect the views of the European Union or the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The project is implemented by a consortium led by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) together with the following non-governmental organizations – Center for Strategic Research and Development of Georgia (CSRDG), Civil Society Institute (CSI), Counseling and Training Center (CTC), Education Development and Employment Center (EDEC) and European Institute of Policy (IEP).

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