I s s u e 16
- A U G U S T ,
2 0 0 0
Strong Community
Orientation and Content
Training - a Never Ending
Process Coaches in the
Community
Formal Training Courses
A Training Station
On-the-Job Training
by Project Staff
A Community Radio
Training Centre
 Strong
Community Orientation and Content
Getting a Community Radio on Air - in a way that ensures it will
stay on air for a while - requires the successful completion of a
number of important steps: no less than 25 according to the trainers
of the NSJ Centre, who carried out two training courses on "How to
Start and Manage a Community Radio" for our Media Project this year.
These steps are all important and include points from how the
community is made up and what it aims to achieve through the radio,
over organisation of the station, deciding the technical set-up,
getting to know the legal framework, and on to financial planning
and finally getting the frequency, the license and preparing the
programme format.
Mid-way in this planning process - and before the equipment arrives
and programme preparation takes up all the attention - it is
important to formalize the community structures. Truly
representative management boards need to be established, effective
community mechanisms have to be in place above the board, and
clearly defined job descriptions for the community radio workers -
paid staff and volunteers alike - have to facilitate their
implementation of the directions given by the management board.
It is to ensure the consolidation of this important step in the
preparatory process that the National Project Coordinator, Mr. Tomas
Vieira Maria, at the end of July started out on a mission to visit
the three communities organizing stations within the UNESCO
project's Wave I-support to establishment of Community Radios.
These management boards will not only be responsible for carrying
out the decisions of the General Assembly of the Community, but will
on a day to day, week-to-week basis form the 'background group' of
the staff and be ultimately responsible for the funds channeled
through them to the radio.
The second important function of the visits by the National Project
Coordinator to Cuamba and Homoine is for the communities to sign
contracts with UNESCO in order to release the funding for equipment,
training and initial running costs.
The signing ceremony is by us and by the communities seen as the
culmination of a more than one year community organizing effort,
which has successfully demonstrated a readiness of the communities
to not only 'have a radio', but also the demonstrated collective
strength to shoulder the major responsibility it is to create the
environment for an effective medium with a strong community
orientation and content.
Training
- a Never Ending Need
When planning a Community Radio training is something that need to be
included at all levels, for all functions and from day 1 to the end.
As most of the work in a Commu-nity Radio station is carried out by
volun-teers, very few will have the required skills to begin with -
and there is no certainty that once they have the skills, they will
stay on.
As such training needs to be ensured continually. In the context of the
Media Project we are doing this in different ways:
Process Coaches in the Community
For each of our partner communities we have identified a process
coach, who is responsible for ensuring informal as well as more
formal training activities for the communities. One evening a week,
or every second weekend between 20 and 60 community members can join
the group and work with programme preparation, production, etc. The
coach also functions as a facilitator of the community-processes
when needed such as spurring the creation of community management
structures, organizational strategies, etc.
Formal Training Courses
In partnership with the NSJ Center we have so far organized two
training courses on "How to Start and Manage a Community Radio
Station" and one course on "Programming for Community Radio". We are
planning to shortly carry out an initial Technical Training course
and one on "Community Audience Research".
A Training Station:
To ensure sustainable structures, we are planning to upgrade one of
our partner stations to function as "A Training Station". The
concept is simple and used elsewhere in the world with great
success: While the Training Station continues to function as a
normal station, 6 core community radio workers (paid staff and
volunteers alike) from one other station spend about two weeks at
the Training Station, each working closely with one staff member
there, who passes on their experience and knowledge to the trainee.
In this way the visitors get well acquainted with the working
procedures of one function in the radio, and at the same time
insight into the organic functioning of the organization, ways of
evaluating programmes and other important day-to-day routines.
On-the-Job
Training by Project Staff:
Yet another way in which we ensure capacita-tion of the communities,
is by sending our own staff to train the radio staff in the
communities. As such the Media Project Administrator,
Mr. Claudio Rodrigues, recently carried out a mission to Chimoio
where we already have a contract. Here Mr. Rodrigues went through
the ins and outs of financial planning, accounting, working with
banks, and inventory of equip-ment. He also ensured that the proper
software was on the computers and the relevant staff and volunteers
were able to work effectively with it. The project will continue to
use this hands-on training with the other communities, once the
staff has been identified and those responsible for administration
and finance in the management committees are known.
A Community Radio Training Centre:
The Institute for Social Communication (ICS), a state Development
Communication organization with provincial delegations, is presently
planning the establishment of a Community Radio and Rural TV
training center. With funding from UNFPA and the Radio Netherlands
Training Center, the Maputo based center is foreseen to function in
partnership with UNICEF, UNESCO, Radio Mozambique and the Ministry
of Agriculture. Once functional, this center will for the first half
year train 20 community radio trainers in the many different needed
disciplines.
Media
Development Project
c/o UNESCO, P.O.Box 1397 Maputo, Mozambique
Tel. +
258.1. 498752/ 490840 Fax +258.1.498717
E-mail: unesco@mediamoz.com
|
