Update

I s s u e 4 0 - M o n t h , 2 0 0 2

Community Radio & Cultural Heritage
Developing Training Plans with ICS
New Colleagues At The Media Project

2002 is the United Nations' Year for Cultural Heritage, and UNESCO is the lead agency. “Cultural heritage of a people is the memory of its living culture… and a powerful symbol of a people’s identity…not only as the mark of a common acknowledged past, but also as the foundation of a shared future” according to the UNESCO Director General Koïchiro Matsuura.

Cultural heritage is seen as both the tangible heritage such as historical buildings, symbolic sites, ornaments, monuments, artistic expression, collections in museums and the intangible heritage such as it is embedded in languages, stories, proverbs, songs, music, dance, theatre, and local traditional knowledge, etc.
Community radio has, besides from actively dealing with the problems and challenges of a given community, the role to strengthen, revitalise and celebrate the special culture here.
UNESCO in Mozambique has therefore, in collaboration with the National Directorate for Cultural Heritage, decided to declare November and December the months where community radios celebrate the oral traditions, making up part of the intangible cultural heritage, mirror of cultural diversity.
All UNESCO Partner stations will as such have daily spots and programmes celebrating the local oral traditions. ICS will encourage their stations to do the same. The radio programmes will be given by UNESCO to the national directorate to facilitate their efforts to record and publish these traditions.

Developing Training Plans With ICS
In the spirit of the Memorandum of Understanding signed between UNESCO and the Institute for Social Communication-ICS-, which stresses the underlines the need on making joint training activities, both institutions have met to develop community radio training plans.
The first training course on “How to consolidate and manage a community radio” designed for the ICS stations will take place in Mocuba, from 19-30 November, targeting the coordinators and administrator of the stations.
A ten days “Programme Production” course will be organized in two parts: the first for the south and the second for the center and north regions, respectively on 4-14 February, and 18-28 March, 2003.
For this particular course, the Media Project and ICS representatives will meet on December 16 to set up the final programme, as well as to come up with the initial list of participants.
Meanwhile, it was decided that the “super technicians” meeting will design the training needs for the community radio technicians, and therefore to decide on the modalities, venue, number of participants and budget.
The courses will be fully funded by the Media Project, as its contribution for the strengthening of the community radio sector in Mozambique.

New Colleagues At The Media Project

The Media Project team is now enlarged with two new staff members: Mr. Elias Cossa and Mr. Carlos Magaia, who will respectively work as Programme Specialist and Administrator.
The Media Project will work, from November 1st, through a new framework, in which the Management Team is made up by the CTA, Birgitte Jallov, as a content and financial supervisor, Tomás Vieira Mário, as the National Coordinator and Carlos Magaia, as our Administrator.
Elias Cossa will coordinate the Print Media Unit and Abubacar Selemangy Bacar the Community Radio Unit, reinforced with the community radio adviser, Faruco Sadique, and Cláudio Rodrigues as both community radio and communication centres administrative field support officer.
The new working framework has been designed to further strengthen and consolidate the efforts towards the implementation of the Media Project’s activities, and enhance the support needed for our partners' longterm sustainability.

Welcome on board, Elias and Magaia!

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