The Minister of Education and Science of Georgia, Giorgi Amilakhvari, together with the representative of the United Nations Children's Fund - Ghasan Khalil, and the member of the Communications Commission, Natia Kukuladze, attended the presentation of the project that promotes the integration of media literacy in formal education. Within the scope of the event, all teachers who underwent special trainings were given relevant certificates of completion.

During the presentation, Minister Amilakhvari addressed the audience, focused on the importance of the project in terms of strengthening the media literacy in schools and thanked the Communications Commission and the United Nations Children's Fund for their active cooperation.

Giorgi Amilakhvari: "In the era of modern technologies, when young people have unlimited access to a vast amount of information, it is necessary for young people to have facts on such important issues as: disinformation, Internet security, freedom of speech, media impartiality standards and so forth. For this very purpose, owing to the initiative of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, from the 2023-2024 academic year, media literacy will be added to the list of optional subjects at the secondary level, which will further contribute to the development of logical and critical thinking, analysis, fact-checking and other necessary skills amongst students.

I am particularly happy that today we will present certificates to our dear teachers who have undergone relevant trainings within the scope of this project. It is teachers who play the most important role in raising awareness of media literacy among our students."

Moreover, the project, which was implemented by the Communications Commission, in close cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia and with the financial support of the United Nations Children's Fund, aims to promote the integration of media literacy into formal education.

During the first stage of the project, a thorough research and assessment in terms of media literacy was carried out at schools. As part of this research, approximately 1500 students and 500 teachers across various schools of Georgia were interviewed. Based on the results of the research, an educational standard for media literacy, thematic matrices, a manual and a corresponding training module for teachers were developed for the 10^th grade level. At the last stage of the project, through the developed training module, media literacy experts retrained 570 teachers across Georgia, which will help teachers to better plan the teaching-learning process.