The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) Asia Pacific board, met in Bangalore in 2010, and one of the outcomes of that regional meeting was the need for further applied and in-depth capacity building. As a result of that initiative, AMARC AP organized the first ever capacity building forum which was held in Bangkok from 11-14th of December 2011. More than 145 community broadcasters attended that training, represented by several countries from the region. There were six parallel workshops running on the same dates, all held in the same venue at Bangkok. One of the workshops was co-organized by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), and was on Participatory Learning. The trainers for this workshop were Ram Bhat and Ekta Mittal from Maraa, and Rita Narayan – a radio producer from Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) in the Fiji Islands.
The 3 main features of the workshop were
- Introduction of Community Learning Programme
- Interviewing Skills (Testimony approach)
- Integrating Mobile Telephony into Learning
The workshop was well attended with about 19 participants from various countries in the region including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Fiji, Indonesia, Philippines, Burma and Sri Lanka. The workshop was well represented in terms of gender balance as well. The participants were a mix of community radio practitioners, trainers, producers and advocates.
Community Learning Programme
The CLP is a technique which has been developed by Commonwealth of Learning in collaboration with various community media initiatives across Commonwealth countries of the world. It involves participatory assessment – where communities and civil society together decide upon one issue that is pertinent to the community and something which the community needs to know more about. Sometimes outside intervention is valuable because some information is not known to the community, but becomes visible when analyzed statistically etc. The next stage of the CLP is the community level CLP workshop, where all stakeholders related to that issue are brought to the table and commitments are obtained from various stakeholders regarding their role, and their contribution to the overall programme. It is usually advisable to have the state authorities (connected to that issue) at the table, since they are best suited to “adopt” the CLP in the long run, if successful. The next step is to run a message matrix with the community. Usually done over a period of 3-4 days, the community together with the community radio identifies negative and positive behaviours associated with the issue and its sub-issues. Each negative behaviour has a consequence and each positive behaviour has a reason and impact associated, which are also identified. The next step is to run a program matrix workshop, where each of the items identified in the message matrix are ‘converted’ to programmes, i.e. formats, participants, etc. A CLP usually runs anywhere between 8-18 months.
Interview Skills
One of the best methods of involving the community is to get them to participate directly on the radio, through them telling their stories. Commonly known as testimonials, these experience based stories have the greatest imapct on a medium like community radio. Sometimes these testimonials are also accompanied with domain experts’ component – which is usually solutions, analysis, dispelling rumours etc. However, getting community to provide testimonials about a particular issue is not that easy. It takes some skills, namely interviewing skills, which were imparted during this workshop. The training in this session involved interviewing tips, debates about how to engage in a conversation with the community, who should hold the recorder, and so on. This was a hands on session wherein participants were given recorders and encouraged to get testimonials from each other as a simulation. The topics were arrived at from sample exercises done in earlier sessions related to CLP.
Integrating Mobile Telephony
Mobile Telephony is one of the fastest growing sectors in the developing world. As mobile phones become some of the cheapest devices to help people communicate, they also become exciting opportunities for people to participate and receive in information related projects. One of the aims in this session was to brainstorm ways in which mobile telephony can be integrated into community learning programmes. Communicators across the world firstly need to realize that mobile telephony is a network over which communities have no fundamental right to access. It is always made available to the public through a private company or a subsidiary of the state, at a particular cost. These companies access spectrum and get telecom licenses for a huge cost from the government – custodians of the spectrum. These costs are then passed on to the consumer who pays for SMS, voice calls etc. Thus, seen in this context, both the radio station as well as the community are both consumers as far as the government or telecom companies are concerned. Secondly, we also need to realize that spectrum is seen as public property in most places around the world. Therefore it logically follows that spectrum should be thus used for public good, or in the public interest. So, the burden of proof – to prove that spectrum (vis-a-vis mobile telephony or internet) is being used in the public interest, is always on the community media initiative. If not, there is a need to factor in costs at every step of integrating mobile telephony models into CLPs. Even though one may save costs through free software, ultimately, the telecom wireless network has to be used through voice call or SMS to communicate from the radio station to the community member. Subsequently, one also has to think through the integration in terms of design, since mobile telephony can be integrated in many ways. The CLP module looks at mobile telephony integration in a few key ways – logistics, learner support, and sharing of materials. The logistics could be updating potential listeners about timing of programme or reminding them of the programme etc. The learner support can be in terms of registration of learners, Q & A after the programme etc. Sharing of materials could mean that the radio programme talks about the primary content, and secondary content related to the same issue could be shared via mobile telephony. The participants were also introduced to some practical tools which can be used to integrate mobile telephony – such as Frontline SMS, Rapid SMS, Ushahidi, Freedom Fone etc. While actual hands on demonstration of some of these tools was outside the scope of this workshop, it did outline the need for further capacity building which would delve into this topic in more detail.
As a result of this workshop, several participants are interested in following up and implementing CLPs in their own countries and contexts. Maraa and SPC are poised to support these initiatives with mentoring support and attempting to spread this best practice among CR stations across the region through capacity building and networking. Watch this space for more information and follow up.
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