The educational centre Passwork of Barcelona wins the final of Escape Fake

• Crossing borders, created by the group Estrangis of the educational centre Passwork is the winning proposal, focusing on the fight against disinformation linked to immigration
• Escape Fake is a training and social transformation project aimed at young people from 16 to 21 years old in vulnerable situations to promote the analytical skills of this new generations in the digital sphere
• The programme has had more than 80 participants from five educational centres around the country

21 April, 2022

Barcelona, 21^st of April 2022-.  The project Crossing borders created by the group Estrangis of the educational centre Passwork (Barcelona) focused on the fight against disinformation linked to immigration, has been proclaimed the winner of Escape Fake, an initiative promoted by Fundación Banc Sabadell, Fundación Exit and Mobile Week, – a programme of Mobile World Capital Barcelona – with Learn to Check as an educational partner. This social programme aims to provide young people with the right tools and promote a critical consumption of content in the fight against disinformation and has had a total participation of more than 80 young people, 5 educational centres and 20 volunteers from all the participating organisations.

Estrangis, form the educational centre Passwork of Barcelona, has been selected by the jury among the five finalists of the initiative for their project Crossing borders (Cruzando la frontera). This escape room recreates a migratory journey based on real experiences and the false information they find about migration with their arrival in Spain. The creation process has been a catharsis and a way of helping each other among young people. It also aims to raise awareness about immigration and minorities. The proposal includes word puzzles, riddles, and language tests to make participants aware of the challenges and difficulties of newcomers.

The winning team will be granted the opportunity to make their escape room activity come to life and build the project in their own school, neighbourhood, or key point in their community. In order to implement it, they will receive professional help of companies in their locality that are experts in escape rooms and in the setting of props and designers to develop the idea. Through this activity, the aim is to teach the young community to verify in a gamified way that they are part of the change and transformation of their environment.

The five finalists treated topics such as nutrition, harmful health risks and immigration. Other areas worked on over the last few months within other participating schools were sexuality, climate change, viral lies at school or gender and identity issues.

The jury which selected the winning project was conformed of the following experts: Cristina Ribes, director of the Gasol Foundation; Concepció Fuentes, professor at the University of Girona and expert in the field of medical and health sciences; Alexandre López, director of the Information and Communication Studies degree at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya; Oriol Esculies, International Delegate of Proyecto Hombre; Liliana Arroyo, Doctor in Sociology and Researcher at the ESADE Institute for Social Innovation; Daniel Morales, Director of the Fundación Orange; Miquel Àngel Prats, Doctor in Pedagogy from the Blanquerna Faculty of Psychology, Education and Sport Sciences; Fernando Suárez, Director of the Transparency and Open Government Area of the Orense Provincial Council; Tatiana Guerrero, Project Manager of the Barcelona City Council’s Department of Social Rights, Feminism and LGTBI; Gonzalo Fanjul, Director of the Per Causa research area; Tomás Pastor, CEO of Newtral; and Aurora Mínguez, RTVE journalist and journalism expert.

The winner was announced during a streaming event held by the participating schools, promoters, and volunteers of this social programme. During the event, the president of the Fundación Banc Sabadell, Miquel Molins, remarked that ” if we want to advance as a society and face the challenges of the contemporary world, we must train future generations in their ability to inform themselves with a critical and conscious eye “.

In her turn, the head of Mobile Week, Marta Fernández, highlighted the great work carried out by all the participants and pointed out that “current affairs are changing at a rapid pace and generate great challenges such as disinformation. In this context, projects like Escape Fake are essential to renew the digital skills and abilities of citizens, thus empower new generations, by promoting critical thinking, innovation, and social influence”.

For his part, the general director of the Fundación Èxit, Nacho Sequeira, congratulated all the participants and stressed that “there is a very clear message and that is that young participants can cause a direct impact on their communities through their escape rooms”.

Finally, the promoter of Learn to Check and Doctor in Communication, Nereida Carrillo, reflected about the process of the project and assured that “young people and their educators are now better prepared to identify false information and manipulated images or videos that reach them and harm them; this learning will certainly have a positive impact on their lives”.

Young people, key in the fight against disinformation

Throughout the first four months of the year, around eighty young people aged between 16 and 21 took part in the different phases of the social transformation programme on digital verification through the development of a themed escape room. During the project, they learnt how to avoid falling into clickbait traps, how to identify phishing, how to detect manipulated images and decontextualised videos and how to differentiate between fraudulent social network accounts, among other things. All of this was done via webinars with the humour actress Asaari Bibang. Volunteers and educators have also been trained to accompany young people in detecting disinformation and to build a fun and instructive escape room that extends the impact of the project and promotes critical thinking and digital verification.

This initiative was born with the aim of providing young people the necessary tools to become a vector of change and social transformation. The programme has organised activities focused on topics that specifically affect or interest young people, aligned with the SDGs of the 2030 agenda, and which are very present in social networks. Through the different challenges, the project has sought to raise awareness among participants about the impact that technology has on our daily lives in order to really be part of the change and to look towards an inclusive digital future and a critical citizenship with what surrounds it.

The participants – organised in teams of three and accompanied by experts in the field of disinformation and volunteers from Fundación Banc Sabadell and the Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation – developed a thematic escape room, which they presented throughout different stages of the project and complemented with webinars and working sessions with volunteers, focusing on disinformation and digital verification.

For further information, visit www.proyectoescapefake.org