A Wetpaint Site | TV Fandex 100

Peace Corps, Antsaravibe

Community Radio Station

Building a Community Radio Station

For a summary of the project, please visit www.radioactive.org.uk. Click on “Projects” along the top bar, then either click on Madagascar on the map or the word “Madagascar” in the text to the left.

Why Build a Community Radio Station?

The lack of communication throughout the vast region of our village is a major barrier to sustainable development. The vision for the radio station is to be a vehicle for spreading information to our community -- whether related to health, environment, agriculture, education, women’s rights, children’s rights, or news and events on any scale -- while involving the community as much as possible in the creation and administration of the radio. The radio uses entertainment-education, communicating important messages through radio plays, songs, contests, games, interviews, stories, etc. – focusing on making the content accessible to as wide an audience as possible in our village, stimulating and light-hearted, while never compromising on the station’s goals of being a means of improving the quality of community life and a force for community solidarity.

Creating the Project

In 2005, in collaboration with the local Peace Corps Volunteer, some members of the community proposed the idea of creating a local radio station as a means of addressing local development issues, with the goal of influencing the local population to make positive changes to improve the quality of life in village. After meetings with influential local residents and several focus groups with members of the general community, the idea had generated such enthusiasm that an association was formed for creating the radio project. This association, which named itself AINGA ("beginning"), learned of the US Embassy’s Democracy and Human Rights Fund (DHRF II) from the Peace Corps Volunteer, a funding opportunity through which a radio station with community development goals could potentially be created. AINGA submitted its proposal to DHRF II in December 2005, requesting financial assistance to fund the purchase of basic studio equipment, an antenna and transmitter, a solar panel array to power the station, as well as to fund the equipment installation and training of community members in basic radio broadcast, journalism, creating content, and technical skills.

In the proposal AINGA elaborated the objectives of the community radio and the programming envisioned for its broadcasts: the promotion of the democratic involvement of the local population in the government, education on our basic human rights as described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, promoting the protection and restoration of the local environment, and keeping the community informed on all important local occurrences. Broadly speaking, the radio intended to provide access to educational information through entertaining programming, and to be a permanent, progressive community tool for doing so.

The radio station was also designed to be a community center, with the intent to bring the local population together and provide access to information through more than just radio broadcasting. In the station, there is a community space for:
- local associations to utilize for meetings,
- the sale of health-promoting products (condoms, malaria treatment, water purification, mosquito nets) as well as training, in collaboration with PSI (Population Services International; see related link to mosquito net and water/sanitation activities for more info),
- a small library for both in-house and public reference use, as well as activities and games for younger children,
- a radio play club (in collaboration with the village secondary school),
- basic computer-skills training, as well as basic IT services (typing, printing, and now scanning!),
- sewing services (machines and materials were donated to the station and were incorporated into its community center).

It was very important to AINGA that the radio station itself be accessible to the community at large, meaning that community members themselves have the opportunity to be involved in creating radio programming and content in a variety of ways. However, AINGA felt that to provide other community-oriented services through the station, services that simply didn't exist in village previously, would also be vital to forwarding the station's vision of increasing community education and well-being on a grand scale.

While waiting for the Embassy decision (released in June of each project year), AINGA worked in the community to acquire and renovate an old building (destroyed by a cyclone a few years back) to house the station. This involved extensive fundraising and outreach, and a lot of hope and trust in the fact that our project would be approved and our work would not be in vain. AINGA secured major collaboration from a local shrimp hatchery through their “Social Development” department, who provided most of the necessary construction materials; a private donor from the regional capital also contributed building materials – including real aluminum windows! – as well as labor costs and transportation assistance. We also received project support from friends and family back in the US as well as from tourists passing through a local bungalow where AINGA had left project information and donation requests, which helped to finance the latrine, fence, outdoor paint, and other unforeseen costs concerning the renovation of the radio building. (DHRF funds are not applicable to construction, reconstruction, etc. – this type of work is the responsibility of the community, if it is needed).

Project Approval!

The Embassy approved for $15,000 for our community radio project. The signing ceremony took place later than expected, in September. Functioning as an outside advisor to AINGA, the local Peace Corps Volunteer traveled to the country's capital Antananarivo with AINGA’s president, where they attended the DHRF II 2006 inauguration ceremony. The ceremony included consultations with the Coordinator for the DHRF II at the Embassy (a former Peace Corps Madagascar Volunteer!) and with representatives of USAID, regarding funds disbursement and basic project implementation. Receiving funds through DHRF II means a year-long relationship with the Embassy, requiring funds requests, purchase and project reports, action plans and timelines, and follow-up reports from the project directors. It can be a far more sophisticated process than project directors are used to; for AINGA's president, although highly educated and administratively-capable, the long trip to Antananarivo for the inauguration and training was crucial to understanding the project phases.

(see the US Embassy in Madagascar page on the DHRF II project, here.)

Project Partners, Expert Advice

RadioActive
In November-December we undertook the studio installation and training process. Through online research during project planning, we contacted an organization called RadioActive, a British NGO dedicated to helping communities like our to establish small radio stations for the purpose of improving the social justice and human rights situations of the coverage region. (To learn more about this awesome organization, see here.)

It was AINGA’s original intention to only use Malagasy individuals and organizations for equipment purchase, installation, and training. Unfortunately, the contacts that we had made for training and installation simply didn’t inspire much confidence in their commitment to the project, nor did they offer quite the sort of training that we were looking for. Equipment purchase in Madagascar is prohibitively expensive because there is such a small body of suppliers, who import the equipment in very limited quantities – plus there is the 18% TVA (VAT, or value-added tax) added onto all purchases in-country, which cannot be financed by the US Embassy and so become the responsibility of the community – yet another chunk of money that can be quite a challenge for a poor rural village.

With RadioActive, we found an organization dedicated to creating sustainable community radio projects and providing everything that we were looking for: the necessary equipment package, training, installation, knowledge, and experience, plus boundless enthusiasm about the power of radio as a community-building force. We felt that we could rely on RadioActive and would benefit enormously from its wealth of experience, helping to create ten community-driven radio stations in ten different places for ten different social justice causes, and that we would be left empowered and enabled rather than reliant on RadioActive to maintain our station.

FarmRadio Network
We found RadioActive with the help of the FarmRadio Network, an organization that links radio stations in the Africa region and helps them to use and develop effective programming regarding health and agricultural/environmental messages. FarmRadio was very supportive of our project effort, and even approved our request to join as the first Malagasy radio station in their network, if our project was approved. FarmRadio is a wealth of information and resources, with radio scripts, trainings, online forums, etc. all available for free from their site. (www.farmradio.org)

Implementing the Project

The director of RadioActive, arrived in Madagascar in October of 2006. After first doing some work with a community radio project in the capital, he traveled to our village to begin work on the radio installation. Because of other DHRF II funding restrictions, it was the community’s responsibility to raise the money for his round-trip airfare, taxi-brousse fare, and food and lodging while in village. A portion of the money was collected directly from personal donations by community members, the result of a radio-project awareness campaign by AINGA in which donation envelopes were distributed throughout the local region. This constituted an enormous, empowering effort on the part of the community at large – however, with an average donation amount of around twenty-five cents, even with over 1000 envelopes collected the community portion was not enough. The rest of the funds were provided through private donations from the US, Diego, and Antananarivo.

Training the Radio Staff
Before RadioActive arrived, AINGA had carried out recruitment in the community for people interested in working for the radio. A dozen people submitted their applications, and were interviewed by AINGA; several of them were chosen to take part in the technical and journalistic training carried out for the project. AINGA was committed to only recruiting people from the local community, people without radio experience but with a solid basic education level and motivation to work on a community radio station, who shared in AINGA’s vision. It was a very difficult decision-making process, wrought with disagreements among AINGA’s members regarding the involvement of youth versus adults, women versus men, locals versus outside experts looking to move to our village to work for the radio, and especially regarding those to whom RadioActive’s training sesssions would be open.

The technical and radio broadcasting/journalism trainings were carried out by RadioActive and also by two volunteers for the project. Each time RadioActive does a radio installation, the project advertises for volunteers with experience and enthusiasm about community radio; with our project, we were lucky enough to get the help of two journalists from the BBC in England, who stayed with us for two wonderful weeks of training. The volunteers’ contributions and insights were invaluable, which they shared with the community through a variety of workshops, given both for future radio employees and for community members alike. Their workshops ranged from basic work with digital and cassette recorders, to microphone technique, to the power of sounds in radio broadcasts, to creating radio plays, interview techniques, to journalistic integrity, to the key to quality radio presentation, and more. We were also able to capture great recordings to use in our initial programming – including stories told by community elders, sounds from the surrounding area, songs by local school children, traditional chants, and radio plays. The volunteers were absolutely vital, and their own experience in village was quite profound for them.

(see here for a profile of one of our BBC volunteers, and here for a journal of the other volunteer's experience on her trip to Madagascar).

lilturns	Latest page update: made by lilturns , Apr 28 2007, 3:37 PM EDT (about this update About This Update Edited by lilturns 45 words added 9 words deleted view changes - complete history)
	Keyword tags: None More Info: links to this page

Threads for this page

Post a new thread

There are no threads for this page. Be the first to start a new thread.