Community Radio for Change

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Community Radio for Change

P Krishnamurthi

Team Leader, DHAN Foundation

AMARC, the World Association of Community Broadcasters, describes community

radio as follows:

“When radio fosters the participation of citizens and defends their interests;

when it reflects the tastes of the majority and makes good humour and hope

its main purpose; when it truly informs; when it helps resolve the thousand

and one problems of daily life; when all ideas are debated in its programs and

all opinions are respected; when cultural diversity is stimulated over

commercial homogeneity; when women are main players in communication

and not simply a pretty voice or a publicity gimmick; when no type of

dictatorship is tolerated, not even the musical dictatorship of the bigrecording studios; when everyone's words fly without discrimination or

censorship, that is community radio”.

DHAN Foundation believes that the Community radio can perform as an enabling tool

for poverty reduction, when it is truly owned and managed by the community,

particularly the Peoples’ Organisations promoted by the poor women, small and

marginal farmers and fishermen. Promoting mutuality, self help and self reliance for

achieving poverty reduction should form foundation for the Community Radios.

DHAN perceives that the main commitment and mandate for community radio

promoted or supported by it should be committed to produce programming on

themes that will contribute to the development of the communities that they serve.

DHAN’s approach in ICT for Development

Poverty is a complex phenomenon. The gap between the rich and poor is widening.

Isolation, powerlessness, and inequalities aggravate poverty, perpetuate it from one

generation to the next and make the poor more vulnerable and never allow them to

come up. For poverty reduction to be achieved, the limitations that the socially and

economically marginalised communities face must be eliminated. These limitations

include low self-esteem, lack of mobility and access to and control over resources,

lack of access to services, to skill and capacity building opportunities, to informationand technology, as well as to decision-making in the community and within and

households.

DHAN’s ultimate goal is to reduce poverty by collective action and promote self-

reliance among the poor and their organisations in a large scale through context

specific development strategies. In all the themes and interventions DHAN follows

the enabling approach of poverty reduction, where the themes such as microfinance,

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water and rainfed farming were conceived to be the means for poverty reduction, not

the ends. Similarly the ICT for Poor theme has also been viewed as a tool to bring

about economic and social development. The ICT theme in DHAN has been conceived

with following model of development.

Fig 1

The enabling approach forms the basis of all the designs and strategies of building

people and institutions for poverty reduction. It is the basic approach to processes

and deriving from that, institutions, knowledge systems and styles of functioning.

This is the enveloping function or approach to the above triad (fig 1). Also, it is

important to note that common property approaches to praxis lead to governance

and collective empowerment. In the former, placing all the issues, conflicts, and

decision-making processes, and so on, in the public space, leads to collective

empowerment. Nothing is kept confined to a few individuals.

The information and communication technologies should be viewed as enabling

inputs for development. The content that the Community Radio Stations develop

within and across the communities should be grounded in the following ‘Basics of

Development’.

• Freedom of choice: How do we help individuals and groups to identify, generate

and act on their choices?

• Quality of life: How do we assist persons to determine and develop the meaning

of their lives, their identities, and their life styles?

• Managing resources: How do we deal with the personal responsibility for

generation, management and conservation of human and material resources?

• Inter relatedness: How do we help individuals, institutions and cultures

recognise and deal with their inter-relatedness and inter-dependence?

• Change as a constant: How do we deal with the causes and effects of change

within and upon individuals, institutions and societies?

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Scaleddown

technolog

y

EnablingEnvironme

nt

OrganisedPeoples’

Institutions



DHAN’s Experience in Community Radio

After the Tsunami, in December

26, 2004, DHAN Foundation

started working in a big way with

the affected fishing and farming

communities along the coast with

a long term development focus. Empowering the community in all aspects,

particularly in building capacity of the community for disaster management was felt

as an important area of intervention. Applications of ICT were introduced through the

Village Information Centres connected with internet facility setup in all the villages.

To complement this ICT initiative, DHAN has launched Kalanjiam Samuga Vanoli

(Kalanjiam Community Radio) with a vision of creating a Community Media Centre

with mixed media model, combining radio with video and web based technologies.

United Nations Development Programme supported this initiative. The Station hasstarted to function from October 2006.

The Station is equipped with audio production infrastructure. A team of trained

Volunteers from the local community are involved in programme production. The

station is connected with the VICs set up by DHAN in the villages through Local Area

Network. These VICs narrow cast the programmes produced and sent by the Station

through the Public Address Systems fixed over towers. Presently programmes of one

hour duration are presented daily. Also the Station broadcasts selected programmes

once in a week for fifteen minutes through the AIR - Karaikal FM Station to.

With the experience gained from Nagapattinam, DHAN supports of the Peoples’ Organisations promoted by it with the farmers dependent on traditional water

harvesting structures called Kanmoi, in Kottampatty block of Madurai district to

launch Vayalagam Samuga Vanoli (Vayalagam Community Radio). Similarly, the

tribal women SHG Federation promoted by it in Indervelly Mandal of Adilabad district

in Andhra Pradesh is getting prepared to launch a community radio station dedicated

for tribal development and named it as Mava Gosti Community Radio with the

support of Integrated Tribal Development Agency. Details of the CRS are in table 1

Table 1: CRS in various contexts

CRS Location Anchored by ContextMajor

stakeholders

Focus

KalanjiamSamugaVanoli

Vizhunthamavadi,Nagapttinam

DHANFoundation

Coastal Fishermen,women andfarmers

Disasterpreparednessand livelihoods

VayalagamSamugaVanoli

Kottampatti,Madurai

Madurai DistrictTank Farmers’ Federation

Rural Farmers andwomen

Disasterpreparednessand livelihoods

Mava GostiCommunityRadio

Indervelly,Adilabad, AP

Sri Indrayi

Mahila KalanjiaSmakahya

Tribal Tribal women Livelihoods,health andeducation

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People need information as much as water, food,

medicine or shelter. Information can save lives,

livelihoods and resources.



Generating Content: Experience of Vayalagam Community Radio

Locally produced content is a lifeline for the sustainability of community

broadcasting. It should focus on the development issues concerning the local

communities, aimed at improving and transforming the living standards of

communities served by the CRS. The content that depicts local issues should alsopromote dialogue among the local communities to work for change, and at the same

time should advocate for the change in the policies, perspectives and processes of

the other development stakeholders around them, the government, private and non-

government agencies.

In DHAN’s understanding of Community Radio, the content generated by the

community can become a key engine for development; as it is a tool that can build

on the local wisdom, community based methods and processes. Change focused

content produced by CRS should be grounded on the basics of development

discussed at the beginning. The CRSs in Nagapattinam and Kottampatty are

following a unique process of generating local content with the support of the social

infrastructure that has already been created in the form of federation of women

SHGs, Farmers and Fishermen (fig 2). It reinforces the need for an organised

platform to promote dialogue and generate needs for content.

The content prioritised by the community varies from context to context. While the

Communities in Nagapattinam required audio content related to cyclones and marine

based livelihoods, the farmers in Kottampatty required content relevant to droughts

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M

Prioritization

ProgrammingPlan

Vol

S

Fig 2. Production and Dissemination of Content



and floods, tanks and tank based livelihoods. The need assessment workshops

organised by the staff under the guidance of the Professionals of DHAN help generate

an exhaustive list of programme areas. The Management committee at the

federation level help in prioritizing the areas and the staff and volunteers prepare

production plan. However the formats for presentation are left to the creativity of the

volunteers (mostly students and young men and women) and the staff. In our

experience following variety of presentation formats were followed buy the CRS in

Kottampatty as well as Nagapattinam.

• Features

• Interviews

• Reporting events and cases

• Stories and experiences

• Readings

• Local announcements

• Discussions and debates

• Radio drama• Talks / narratives

• Local music and songs

• Jingles

Producing Content

Production is done in three methods depending on the availability of equipment,distance from the production centre and financial resources available for production.

Method 1:

A well equipped audio production theatre established in Kottampatty, a block town

where the people have easy access to travel. Most of the arranged programmes such

as talks, interviews, songs, music and readings are made in the theatre.

Method 2:

Each VIC has a provision of a mini mixer and a microphone connected with a

computer and an amplifier. The VICs which are primarily meant for offering internet

based services are also used as production facility, wherein the people/producers are

invited to the centre for recording. Live announcements are done there itself. Some

of the programmes are recorded and transferred to the main studio in Kottampatty

after a first level editing for further editing.

Method 3:Field recording is done using voice recorders in the areas where there is a difficulty in

bringing producers to the VIC or theatre at Kottampatty. Mostly event coverages,

spot commentaries and interviews are done in this method.

Disseminating Content

In Kottampatty, programmes are narrowcasted through the public address systems

fixed over Village Information Centres in 20 villages covering about 10,000

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populations. Flexible timings of narrowcasting is decided after consulting the villagersfor avoiding disturbances to their other works (e.g. school and exam times). A

typical scheme of narrowcasting is given in the table 2.

Table 2: Programme schedule in Vayalagam Samuga Vanoli

Time Content / format Duration10 AM Thirukural with explanation by VIC operators 15 Min

11 AM Live announcements

• Village events and meetings

• Birth day wishes, Wedding wishes

• PDS announcement

• Panchayat announcements

• Announcements for SHG, Farmers’ groups

• Weather information

15 Min

5 PM Pre recorded programme

• Speeches and debates,

• Agriculture and animal husbandry

• Stories,• Health information,

• Tips for students, youth etc.

30 Min

6 PM Vayalagam Vanoli Programme made

by/with communities

• Best practices by farmers, entrepreneurs

• New initiatives

• Traditional practices

• Folk music, songs and stories

• Festivals, celebrations

• Women and children

• Health and education etc.

60 Min

Exchanging Content

While the Community Radios offer ample opportunity for making localised contents

that suits the social, cultural and linguistic characteristics of the defined geography,

there exists opportunities for the two or more CRSs to exchange their contents. In

the context of globalizing media, among the communities who live similar lives and

have similar issues can very well connect with each other to share their content,

expertise and experiences. There are initiatives by national and international

networks that are promoting such exchanges. In our case the Kalanjiam Community

Radio in Nagapattinam and the Vayalagam Community Radio in Kottampatty,

Madurai, both are sharing the same context of disaster vulnerability. The formercould share many of their audio content except a few areas that are related to

marine ecosystem to the latter.

However while exchanging contents care needs to be taken to ensure that they share

similar contexts, culture, and language, and moreover relevant to the purpose for

which it was made. By sharing content, CRSs can increase the impact of their work

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and reach new audiences, collaborate with each other for joint productions, learn

new formats, and bring diversity to the programmes.

Contents on local needs: Kalanjiam Community Radio Experience

The focus of the Kalanjiam and Vayalagam Community Radios is disaster

preparedness. Disaster preparedness depends more on how information and services

will be facilitated before, during and after the disasters. Community radio

programming addresses local information and community needs that revolve around

disaster preparedness, livelihoods, local best practices, women and children, health,

education and farming. The Federation is getting prepared to apply for a license to

broadcast under the new licensing policy guidelines issued by the Ministry of

Information and Broadcasting.

The Kalanjiam Community Radio has made so far 2032: 35 minutes of programme of

varying types and areas as detailed in the table 3.

Table 3: Areas of Programming: Kalanjiam Samuga Vanoli

SlNo Content

No. of Programmes Duration

1 Thirukural 376 3:21:23

2 Health 433 20:01:24

3 Agriculture 164 18:11:57

4 Children 533 25:45:26

5 Women & SHG 97 9:51:37

6 Disaster Mitigation 32 4:36:40

7 Governance 27 5:54:49

8 Livelihoods 49 6:28:45

9 Education 70 7:44:23

10 Culture 29 5:22:46

11 Awareness 33 3:44:26

12 General 353 15:18:52

13 Folks & Songs 221 8:45:08

Total production 2417 135:07:36

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The Chart (Fig 3) shows that women, agriculture and health are the major areas of

programming, which is more of best practices in existing sea and land based

livelihoods. Similarly programming for Children was 20 percent of the total duration

of programmes produced. Traditional health practices, local culture and folk songs

were the major areas of programming to fulfill the demands of the communities

generated during need assessment.

Learnings from our Experience: Content for Change

The impacts of globalization of media on the consumers in the developing and under

developed countries are devastating. The people are subjected to a staggering

amount of information every day. Due to the proliferation of electronic media, the

average Indian spends several years of their lifetime watching TV, listening to music,

surfing the internet, and playing video games. The CR Movement in India should

build processes and mechanisms in generating, producing and disseminating content

that can transform the communities who were traditionally kept away from the ambit

of media into media creators, users and owners.

In order to create change, the CRS should assume certain roles and take up certain

responsibilities so as to create change in the individuals and societies. These 3Rs

should be built around the values of self governance and self management.

Fig 3. Typology of Programmes

2%16%

13%

20%7%3%

4%

5%

6%

4%

3%

11%

6%

Kural

Health

Agriculture

Children

Women & SHG

Disaster Mitigation

Governance

Livelihoods

Education

Culture

Awareness

General

Folks & Songs

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Owners

PassiveListeners

ActiveContributors

ResponsibilitiesSelf Management

Self Regulation

Accountability

Transparency

RightsFreedom of Expression

Collective ownership

Access and Control overICT

Entitlements over social,economic, cultural and

political rights

RolesSelf governance

Media literacy

Accelerating development

Redefining and ensuringentitlements



Fig 4: Roles, Rights and Responsibilities of the CRS & Communities

The transformation can happen only when the communities start thinking critically

about news, entertainment, and advertisements, asking questions such as "on whomthey are targeting?", "what interests does it stands for?", and "what techniques are

they applying to persuade the intended audience?" The content that the CRS produce

should be able to create awareness among the communities to look for what is

needed for them, what is not there and what kind of impacts certain messages,

viewpoints and perspectives can create. The content that the communities make

through their CRS should enable them to place it into a larger context of

development. This means facilitating them to understand the structures and realities

that affect their development, freedom of choice, inter relatedness and quality of life,

ultimately leading into collective empowerment.

Challenges in ensuring Content

No doubt, the Community Radios have the potential to create conditions that provide

people with access to useful information, and ways for people to express their

sentiments, opinions, views, aspirations, strengths and their ideas for development.

It can support the communities to build consensus on their development priorities.

However there are few challenges to facilitate the communities to move from

producers to owners of the Community Radio.

• Ensuring a strong focus on "local" news, music, events, people and issues–

especially coupled with "global" relevance.

• Exploring, identifying and cultivating new talents and building capacity of the

local communities and volunteers to enhance their ability to adapt, getting

acquainted with the tools and technology that are available at free or affordable

costs.

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• Building institutionalised linkages with the mainstream agencies that are involved

in disaster management, to provide legitimate and localised information on

disasters.

• Meetings costs of content production and capacity building for the staff,

volunteers and communities is a major challenge in the initial phase, while the

CRS is still working towards meeting running costs. A proven model needs to

emerge to meet this challenge.

• Access and use of materials that are copy righted. The CRS stands for non

commercial broadcasting may not be able to afford to the royalties to be paid for

the copyrighted materials. Content exchange among the non-commercial

broadcasters needs more focus.

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Community Radio to preserve local talents

The boy stretches his neck to reach the microphone that dangles in front

of him. But that does not break the enthusiasm. He eagerly narrates thestory of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves. This young storyteller comes from a

rural village near Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu. He is one of the many

talents, staff and volunteers, who help in creating a very unusual radio

programme for an unusual radio station Kalanjiam Samuga Vanoli. He

was brought to the station by Porkodi, a Radio Volunteer. She and her colleagues know how to spot

interesting topics, to do interviews, to edit and also how to narrate a programme. Every day they go

out on field assignments to collect new audio material. The topics range from agriculture, health,

education, issues around Self Help Groups, events around festivals up to disaster preparedness

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Building Capacity of the communities to make relevant contents

The Kalanjiam Community Radio Station jointly with district disaster preparedness training unit

organised a training programme with 40 Community members from five villages of the Keelaiyur

block. They were trained on disaster and its types and how to respond in a disaster situation, doing

basic search and rescue. They were also taught on steps to be taken in a distress situation. The

participants were shown how tackle fire accident and different rescue methods. It was followed bytraining on First Aid and follow up. A practical manual on disaster management was distributed to

the village information centers and community leaders attended the training programme. After the

programme, a series of audio programmes were prepared by the participants who were trained in

the workshop.

Community Radio content to facilitate exchange of local expertise

Karunanidhi a small farmer from Vizhundhamavadi village of Nagapattinam district, in Tamil Nadu

has been growing a new variety of Chedi Murungai (Annual Drumstick) and earning a good profit

from it. Growing annual drumstick was some thing new to the villagers nearby. Community Radio

Volunteer – Vetri came to know this in one of the need assessment workshops and approached him

for an interview. He prepared a radio programme on it and narrowcasted through the Kalanjiam

Samuga Vanoli with his contact information. After the programme, many people approached

Karunanidhi to know how to cultivate and market it. Karunanidhi in addition to sharing his

experience, he helped them to get about 300 seeds and 150 seedlings to neighboring farmers.

Now, many farmers in nearby villages are growing Chedi Murangai and enjoying the benefits.

Community Radio to provide platform for the youths

Sowmya, 20 years, is a drop out from school after higher secondary education due to poverty in

her family. She was working in a textile showroom in Nagapattinam as a sales girl. When contacted

by her friend Padma who is working in the Kalanjiam Samuga Vanoli, she reluctantly agreed to

become a community radio volunteer. Her association in the Community Radio transformed her

outlook not only about herself, but also on the village she lives. She is the one who has made the

highest number of programmes among other volunteers and she feels proud about it. She says “I

am respected in my village now and happy about listening their feedbacks. Now I could feel

importance of my work and I am getting excitement every day by doing new work and meeting

new people.



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Your neighbor’s voice:Reducing vulnerability to disasters through community radio

19 December 2008

by Elizabeth Stevens

As Oxfam wraps up its work related to the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, it is helping ensure that partners and

communities have the skills and resources they need to continue the important work of reducing the risk of future

disasters. Oxfam has funded a new research center in India that develops pilot programs on risk reduction to

complement ongoing development work aimed at reducing poverty.

Manoj Prabakar’s radio address on water management is delivered flawlessly, and when he steps out

of the studio, he is congratulated warmly—especially by his grandmother, who puts her arms around

him.

Manoj is 13, and his audience is the village of Mangalamapatti, India. The studio is an information

center—a single room that serves about a hundred purposes for five communities, and the machine

used for sound editing is the only computer in town.

This is community radio, where a village fashions the programs it wants and needs, and fast-talking

DJs and advertisers need not apply.

Diverting floods and planting trees

The Advanced Center for Enabling Disaster Risk Reduction (ACEDRR) of the Dhan Foundation, an

Oxfam partner, has helped launch a pilot community radio project to serve around 100,000 people in

rural settlements of Madurai district, because they see its potential in improving disaster response

and risk reduction at the village level.

When emergencies like floods and fires strike remote communities, it’s friends and neighbors who are

the first responders. Notifying a village quickly of an emergency in a neighboring community can

make all the difference in how effectively help is mobilized.

And localized weather and flood forecasts can help natural hazards from becoming community

disasters.

“If we get information about rain upstream, we will take some precautions” says Sethurajan, a

farmer whose community has a reservoir for irrigation purposes. “We’ll open the sluices to divert the

flood; we’ll cut off the big bunds to divert the route so excess water can be drained off.”

But in communities that struggle with the everyday disaster of poverty, anything from a poor crop to

the loss of a farm animal to a serious illness can create a household emergency, so villagers are

eager for information about anything and everything that can improve the security and well-being of

their families.

Men seem enthusiastic about radio shows on outbreaks of livestock diseases and on the latest

agricultural techniques. One suggests that local radio could help revive kudi maramaithu, the ancient

practice of careful community maintenance of the village reservoir and water works.

Women, says a radio enthusiast named Vijia, like programs about health, legal matters, and the

importance of tree planting. “We get a lot of information about our daily lives,” she says. “As women,

we are happy about that.”

Radio: it’s practical

The radio is a medium that ensures that almost everyone has access to information, no matter what

their age and reading level.

“I’m illiterate, but I’m learning so much,” says Manoj’s grandmother Podaiamma.

Although televisions here are widespread–gifts from the state to households in even the smallest,

poorest villages of Tamil Nadu – they’re not as practical as radios in that you have to stop what

you’re doing to watch TV.

“With radio,” says Sethurajan, “we can keep on working.”

Young women take the lead

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Community Radio for Change