Meet Thitayaporn Hongsakul (Pang) & Kanyarat Ratanasaovapak (Maii) From Thailand as they journey through learning communication and life skills to implement their campaign that aims to help underprivileged students.

What did you learn as the finalists of the 2nd ASEAN Youth Social Journalism Contest 2021?

Once we are selected to be the finalists of ASEAN Youth Social Journalism (AYSJ) Contest 2021, we have learned so many things throughout the 4-day workshop and campaign. On the 1^st day, we learned how to grab the attention from the media. These tools helped us to create interesting contents which can attract the audiences. On this day, the trainer, Horea Salajan, opened the wonderful advertising videos which can grab our attention well as the examples. We also knew more about ASEAN and setting up a Facebook page on the 2nd day of the workshop. There are a lot of formats of contents we can provide and communicate to our audiences in Facebook page: status, link, photo, infographic, poll, video, multi-media, and event. Moreover, we learned how to find the information (sources of information). In this topic, the interview is a way to gather information, and there are many suggested questions we should ask interviewees for background information, their opinions, and their emotions. For example, we could ask “What had happened?”, “What are the options?”, and “What is an example?”.

Can you mention a couple of highlight lessons you learnt?

We learned the jobs that are mostly affected by the COVID-19 crisis and the 21st century skills. Which are divided into three groups: learning skills, literacy skills, and life skills. Moreover, another highlight the trainer taught us is how to capture audio-visual materials containing many theories such as rule of third, shot sizes, and sequence. Another trainer, Orla Tinsley, also gave us advice for creating and writing stories. In this section, we asked her how to write the attractive contents for boring topic like education. She replied to us kindly that we could begin with the statistics and facts and something that is unusual and explain “Why” we were creating those contents for the audiences. In the last day of the workshop, we knew five stages of content marketing to help us penetrate the market that we targeted. The trainer also showed us how we could use page insight in order to know whether our implemented strategy could lead our page to success or not.

Did you have prior concern during the campaign initiation?

At first, when we officially started our campaign, we were very excited and nervous. We also thought that if we could do it well or not because, at that time, our universities started a new semester. We had to do both of them simultaneously. We could not ignore our campaign, studies, and examinations. In the beginning, we thought that we would not do it well; however, our trainer, Horea Salajan, helped us by explaining the details of our work. Therefore, we realized that this competition was not only competition, but it was the additional learning.

 What were the success and benefits you gain from the campaign?

Also, in the short-term period of running the campaign, we have got new friends and had the opportunity to do new things such as editing videos, creating contents, and donating books. Moreover, people whom we helped such as the children from Wat Thai Ko School received books, money for their lunches, and toys for improving their potential. We also have known how to work with outside organizations. Because of all these reasons, we feel that we are lucky to be the finalists. Thank you to ASEAN Foundation for organizing this competition. In addition, thank you to our friends for giving such an unforgettable friendship.

Edited by: Tiffany Celine Handoko, Communications Intern