[creative-radio] Phone journalism gives a voice to India's rural poor

 

[excerpt]

Choudhary, a former BBC journalist, saw a link between the rural poor's
exclusion and the violence wracking the region. "It is natural when your
concerns are not heard you find another avenue -- that avenue has happened
to be a violent ideology called Maoism."

Mobile is the the most democratic tool in India today
Shubhranshu Choudhary, journalist and founder of CGNet Swara

And so with support from the International Center for Journalists, with
whom he is a Knight International Journalism Fellow, Choudhary began an
experiment in citizen journalism.

"We understood it would have to be cheap and that voice would be key --
because people are not comfortable with reading and writing," he said. The
initial phase of the experiment, which revolved around the internet and
community radio stations, "failed completely," he admitted. But then he
took a different tack, focusing on mobile phones, which have a 74%
penetration rate in India.

"Mobile is the most democratic tool in India today," said Choudhary.
Although the mobile penetration rate in rural areas was about half the
national level (36%), phones were still a common sight even in the most
remote villages. "When we started working in 2004-5 in the villages, we did
not see mobile phones. But there has been a sea-change. Mobile phone use
has exploded."

Read more: Indian phone features 29 Quran translations

The result, CGNet Swara (roughly, the "voice of Chhattisgarh") is a voice
portal that allows anyone with a mobile phone to record or listen to news
and items of interest. The operation is simple: on dialing the service's
number, users press "1" to record a report, or "2" to listen to one. Once a
report is recorded, it is verified and edited by a team of moderators
before being made accessible on the service.

The service "did better than we ever expected," said Choudhary. He added
that in the two years since it began, Swara has had 9,000 users, logged
more than 30,000 phone calls and published 750 news stories, including a
number which have had a big impact. [...]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: S.Choudhary <smitashuATgmailDOTcom>
Date: 26 February 2012 15:21
Subject: Phone journalism gives a voice to India's rural poor

Dear George,

Thought you may like to read a story on CGnet Swara as part of CNN coverage
of Mobile World Congress.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/22/tech/mobile/india-mobile-citizen-journalism/index.html

regards
Shu
--
Shubhranshu Choudhary
Knight International Journalism fellow
E-mail: shuATcgnetDOTin
Mob (IN): +91 9811066749

Content of the people, by the people, for the people
http://cgnetswara.org

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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[creative-radio] Ruyuk's Community Radio Helps Revive Forests via IPS

please see below
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106824

Irman Meilandi
Chairman of Indonesian Community Radio Network

INDONESIA
Community Radio Helps Revive Forests
By Kanis Dursin*

*JAKARTA, Feb 21, 2012 (IPS) - Irman Meilandi unhesitatingly attributes the
return of birds, wildlife and the forests around his hilly village of
Mandalamekar in West Java province to conservation advice streaming in over
community radio. *

"Thanks to Radio Ruyuk (meaning scrubland), the people of Mandalamekar have
adopted a campaign to replant deforested areas and conserve forests around
the village," says Meilandi, referring to the yet to be licensed community
radio station that specialises on environmental issues.

Broadcasting on FM 107.8 megahertz, Radio Ruyuk goes on air at 6 p.m. and
signs off at 11 p.m. Its programmes discuss organic farming, herbal plants
and medicines and village infrastructure, all in the local Sundanese
dialect.

"Radio Ruyuk was designed to encourage local people to pay attention to the
condition of the village's forests and wildlife," says Meilandi, co-founder
of the Mitra Alam Munggaran (Nature's First Partner) or MAM, a social
movement concerned with shrinking water supply in Mandalamekar, a
seven-hour drive from Jakarta.

Established in 2002 by a dozen local residents, the MAM movement started
out by organising public discussions, distributing leaflets and putting up
posters, urging people to protect the forests around the village.

While MAM was able to get local officials to ban the harvesting of rattan,
hunting, and cutting down trees in protected forests, cooperation from
local people was initially missing. Many were involved in tree felling and
cultivation on lands designated as water-catchment areas.

Radio Ruyuk has been organising, on Sunday evenings, a live talk show from
7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on various environmental issues confronting the
718-hectare village. The hosts and participants are mostly farmers and
small traders, working voluntarily.

The issues discussed include tree-planting activities, with MAM activists
occasionally joining in to explain local policies or provide updates on the
status of Indonesia's forests.

Indonesia, one of the world's most densely forested countries along with
Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congro, saw extensive deforestation
through the last century. Its estimated forest cover of 170 million
hectares in 1900 was halved by the beginning of this century.

"The MAM programme aims to raise local people's awareness and stimulate a
sense of responsibility toward the environment," says village chief Yana
Noviadi. "We wanted more people to be aware of the dangers of deforestation
and to participate in replanting."

Radio Ruyuk, which hit the airwaves for the first time in October 2008, is
run by the Mandalamekar Community Broadcasting Council, which manages the
radio station with Meilandi serving as its secretary.

"In the beginning, Radio Ruyuk focused on environmental issues, the link
between the shrinking of river waters and deforestation in the area and
also local forest-related policies," says Noviadi.

In 2008, a year after he was elected village chief, Noviadi declared forest
conservation as one of his official programmes, further boosting people's
participation in tree-planting activities.

By 2011, Mandalamekar had replanted a total of 118 hectares of deforested
area, including some 40 hectares located around water sources, and before
long the volume of water flowing into the village's rivers had increased.

"Paddy fields that once lay fallow are now irrigated and farmers grow paddy
all year round," says Meilandi, adding that Mandalamekar has 34 hectares of
irrigated paddy fields.

"More importantly, stories of local residents picketing water irrigation
structures or quarrelling over water resources are unheard off now,"
Meilandi says.

Noviadi concurs with Meilandi, saying that he had heard stories of farmers
setting up traps to discourage people trying to divert water. "While these
are now told in a joking manner, they were disturbing," Noviadi says.

Since 2008, local officials have made it a policy to ask every visitor to
the village to plant trees in designated areas. "We want their support for
our programme. The idea is to instill environment awareness among visitors
so they can do the same in their villages," Noviadi says.

By law, community radio is limited to a radius of two-and-a-half km, but
Radio Ruyuk is received in six districts with a combined population of more
than 10,000 people.

"A neighbouring district head once phoned in with a request for a talk on
steps that can be taken at the grassroots level to conserve forests. When
we asked where he was calling from, he replied that he was at a gathering
of village heads in his district who were waiting to hear us over the
radio," Noviadi said.

Mandalamekar's conservation efforts have not gone unnoticed. For two
consecutive years, in 2009 and 2010, it won the prize for the best
self-financed village forest management programme at the regional level. It
was also runner-up at the provincial level in 2010.

"To the best of our knowledge, the regional government never made any
assessment of our forest management, but I guess they listen to Radio
Ruyuk," Meilandi says.

Meilandi himself claimed the 2011 Seacology Prize for his efforts to
preserve the environment and culture of Mandalamekar. "They told me that I
was chosen from among candidates in 46 countries," Meilandi says.

Seacology, a non-profit with headquarters in Berkeley, California, focuses
on preserving island ecosystems and cultures around the world.

"Winning awards has never been our goal," Meilandi said. "We take pride in
the fact that we were able to replant deforested areas with our own
resources, without external help," he says.

*This story was produced with the support of
UNESCO<http://www.unesco.org/new/en/>

(END)

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[creative-radio] UNESCO - Women Make the News (WMN): Rural women’s access to media and information

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kanchan K. Malik <drkanchan07@gmail.com>
Date: 26 February 2012 00:08
Subject: [cr-india] UNESCO Women Make News 2012 - Initiative to be
celebrated on March 8
To: cr-india <cr-india@sarai.net>

*Women Make the News (WMN), *a global policy advocacy initiative aimed at
promoting gender equality in the media, launched annually on the occasion
of International Women's Day (8 March).* *

The theme for this year, *Rural women's access to media and information*,
seeks to underscore and stimulate knowledge exchange on:

- the importance of policies and programmes in favour of access to media
and information in rural communities, particularly for rural women; and
- good practices and successes in this area as undertaken by public
service broadcasters, commercial and community media and NGOs working to
improve rural women's access to media and information.

Access to media and information by rural women and men has many important
dimensions. Within the framework of the function of the media to provide
information needed by rural women to enhance their economic empowerment and
political participation, WMN 2012 focuses on two of these dimensions:

- can and how are rural women and men accessing (listen to, read or
watch) radio, newspaper and television in their communities, and how are
community media and new media/technologies helping?
- are rural women actually in charge media programming, production and
broadcast?

Do join this effort initiated by UNESCO. For information, ideas and
resources to mark the occasion, please check out
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/crosscutting-priorities/gender/women-make-the-news/

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