Community Radio, Part 2

Photo by Atul Loke/ Panos for Oxfam America. Here, one of DHAN Foundation's community radio operators does her thing.

The DHAN Foundation has a development communications office which has just recently concluded two pilot projects, sponsored by DHAN's Advanced Center for Enabling Disaster Risk Reduction (ACEDRR), which was in turn, sponsored by Oxfam America. (Phew!)

In the first project, the DHANites helped villages set up a community radio, operated by community operators, content produced by community members on topics relevant to them. They have applied for a broadcasting license which will take about two years to get. In the meantime, they are narrowcasting, over loudspeakers positioned throughout the village.

In the second, the DHAN team created a number of videos with input from community members, and for community use, which they hope will be the building blocks for a community television station, following the same model as the community radio above. (Every household in Tamil Nadu is gifted a television by the state government. I wonder if this is because the politicians of Tamil Nadu are aging movies stars?).

With better access to information, the rural poor can manage risk better. If content that is of community interest, it develops a habit of tuning in, allowing the radio or television to serve as an early warning device. And with community members creating content, it offers a chance for them to become active citizens and to learn about the content their reporting on as well as about audio production.

Most of the radio operators are young women, who are excited to be learning valuable new skills.

“Through this job I’m learning so much and getting exposure to so many things,” said one girl named Bhuvaneswari to an Oxfam writer. “I’m learning, so I’m happy."

Going back to Hugo Slim's challenge: without Oxfam's support, and then without ACEDRR's support, and without DHAN's hard work, there would be no village information center. There would be no radio production studio.

But the community members are the key ingredient: to develop the content, to be the producers, and to be the listeners. If they thought that this project were lame, or that the people offering it were obtuse, or that the content was not useful, it would go nowhere. (And maybe would become self-fulfilling).

When we think about the statement "We help people," maybe this is a good example of an inclusive "we," where "we" = (Oxfam+ ACEDRR+DHAN+ people). If we could just get the licenses approved (requiring government involvement). And start selling advertisements (private enterprise).

Then "we'd" be getting somewhere.