Our Mission

Until every eligible voter is given the tools to understand how their government works and how to identify disinformation for themselves, extreme views and conspiracy theories will continue to grow, and democracy will suffer. Founded in 2015 to protect and amplify democracy, Shout Out UK (SOUK) is a social enterprise on a mission to ensure that political and media literacy education is available to everyone, regardless of their socio-economic background, ethnicity, or gender. We have worked tirelessly to safeguard democracy, ensuring all individuals can gain critical thinking skills, analytical abilities and confidence, empowering them to be democratically engaged and informed citizens.

Our Story

Founded by Matteo Bergamini in 2015, Shout Out UK (SOUK) is a multi-award winning creative social enterprise on a mission to defend and amplify democracy by ensuring all citizens understand how their government functions through political literacy, are inoculated from disinformation and misinformation through media literacy and are given a chance to have a say in how their country is run through our own youth voice platform and various programmes.

SOUK has run some of the largest city-wide voter registration and voter awareness campaigns in the democratic world. Furthermore, its education programmes on Media & Political Literacy have been utilised to combat disinformation and extremism nationwide through Prevent, as well as translated into various languages and utilised in multiple countries.

SOUK has worked with a number of clients, including, but not limited to; the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, OFCOM, the Greater London Authority, the US Embassy in London, the US State Department and NATO.

Our Awards

  • Best Media & Political Literacy Training Programmes 2023, Awarded by SME News
  • Most Impactful Company to Work For 2023, Awarded by Impact Fifty
  • Democracy Pioneer 2020, Awarded by Nesta
  • Youth-Led Award 2018, Awarded by The British Youth Council.
  • Harrow Business Den Winner of 2016, Awarded by Harrow Council.

Advocacy

Launched in January 2021, SOUK is currently providing the secretariat for the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Political Literacy, a coalition of MPs and Lords with the aim of bringing political and media literacy education to every single young person in Britain, regardless of socio-economic status.

Our Theory of Change

A sense of exclusion, alienation, and disengagement from political processes is increasingly prevalent in today’s society. Compounded by rapid societal change and economic hardship, this leads to increasing mistrust in institutions, exacerbating the democratic deficit. When individuals feel isolated and powerless, they are then less likely to discern fact from fiction, becoming easy targets for mis/disinformation, and more susceptible to radicalisation. This vulnerability is exacerbated by a lack of understanding of how democratic systems function, how individuals can participate in society, and their role in the collective democratic journey.

Shout Out UK’s Media and Political Literacy programmes are grounded in the European Digital Media Observatory guidelines, and emphasise co-design and evidence-based delivery. We build our beneficiaries’ media literacy skills and their understanding of the democratic structures that affect them. This improves their confidence, emotional resilience, and critical thinking. By instilling a sense of belonging and empowerment, we prevent nefarious actors from exploiting their sense of alienation to radicalise them.

  • Improved access, use, and responsible creation of content.
  • Increased online safety, privacy, and protection from harm.
  • Enhanced critical thinking skills.
  • Enhance participants’ ability to express their opinions constructively and productively.
  • Building Emotional Resilience.
  • Ameliorated sense of digital citizenship and productive media engagement.
  • Enhanced understanding of the mechanics of their government and the ways they can involve themselves in their democracy.
  • Increase in participants’ positive feelings towards their community.
  • Participants become emotionally resilient to the provocative and charged propaganda of extremist groups, including FIMI (Foreign Information Manipulation & Interference).
  • Enhanced ability to identify extremist content and discern fact from fiction in a logical and fact-based manner.
  • Enhanced culture of responsible and ethical information consumption.
  • Increased societal resilience against feelings of alienation and disaffection.
  • Improved sense of legitimacy in democracy and systems of government.
  • A more robust democracy, with active and informed citizens, resilient to mis/disinformation, reducing the democratic deficit.

Our Team

Where We Work