RTK - FYR Macedonia Youth

Creative sparks are in the air at the Right to Know meeting in Skopje, Macedonia, where 17-year-old Milica Gjuroska is working on a TV show created by RTK. The TV show is just one of several youth-oriented projects introduced by RTK Macedonia; others use theatre, art, photography and new technology to communicate information and collect data on the knowledge and behavior of young people. Milica — a high school student whose hobbies include making crafts, drawing, reading, and writing for her brother's music magazine and who hopes to do something creative as a career — helps organize the RTK workshops about the TV show.

How she got involved with RTK and HIV/AIDS work:
I started working with nongovernmental agencies because I realized I want to do something that would help other people. Two years ago, I was involved in a big project called Youth Week "I Woke up in Motion" that was done by HOPS, an NGO that works with marginalized youth, in cooperation with other NGOs. Now I'm a member of an NGO named LIM-PID that developed after Youth week and is working on RTK and doing a number of creative educational activities together with other NGOs.

What she does with RTK:
I work as a youth coordinator, which means that I organize the young people who are part of the project's workshops. We have meetings where we discuss things about the projects, like ideas about what we can do in the future or how we can make things better. Also, I'm part of the team working on the TV show that RTK is creating in Macedonia.

What she likes and doesn't like about her work:
There are no things I dislike about this project — I think everything so far is OK. I like that I work with people like me. It makes me feel better as a person because I know that at least I'm doing something useful.

What a typical afternoon of work with RTK involves:
After school I go to the place where we have our meetings for RTK and discuss what we're going to do with the TV show. We are planning how it will look and talking about what we like and dislike about it. The group I'm working with is good — sometimes we may have some conflicts, but they're all about the topics we're discussing or small things, like someone not coming on time. When I don't go to work on the show, sometimes I visit the other RTK workshops to see what other young people are doing. They do different things, but you can see that the young people in each one are working on their project because they really love it. In the comics workshop, you have people who are drawing all the time and talking about interesting things. In the photography workshop, there are people from all different nationalities. In the web design workshop, as in the other workshops; they do a lot of researching; they're learning how to build a web site and are going to put all the materials from RTK on the 'Net. In the hip-hop workshop, there are fascinating people full of interesting knowledge, making music and doing breakdancing. It's great to be part of it, even as an observer: You can see a lot of things, you can learn a lot, you can hear different opinions. The main concern is that you must be careful when working with other people because everybody is different and has a different background; you must have different methods for working with each person if you want to have results.

On the TV show:
The TV show consists of five parts. The first one is a TV drama. The second is a survey where we ask people on the street what they think about something connected with HIV/AIDS. After the survey we have a guest, usually some interesting but not famous person who is doing something that we can connect to AIDS. For example, our guest might be some boy who is skating so that young people who are interested in skating can learn something about AIDS while watching. You need protection if you are doing extreme sports, and you need protection while you are making love. The fourth part is something like a documentary part, filmed by us. It's about some interesting place, object or other thing that we can link to AIDS in some way. The last part is about technical terms connected with AIDS that we use, and their real meaning. Maybe we'll have other parts, but I don't know yet. The main thing is that all the information you want to give to young people must be served on a plate with other things that young people are interested in.