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A Women´s
Community Radio Festival
78 women gathered during July 19 and 20 in Chimoio in representation of the country´s 37 community radios on air. The two intense days were filled with concentrated discussion, listening and planning, with laughing, dancing and effective presentations of the women´s situation in the communities in the form of drama, storytelling, poetry and songs, and ending up with a clearly formulated “Chimoio Declaration”, setting a clear action plan for the established regional women´s community radio networks. Noting that the community radio stations in Mozambique with very few
exceptions have a participation of between 10 and 30 % women only at all
levels of activity (community management, salaried staff and volunteers
alike) and knowing that women are of core importance for all vital
community activities, the overall objective of the festival was to
describe and present the present situation as clearly as possible, and
to come up with some realistic aims for how to address this imbalance. With an aim to establish a Women´s Community Radio Network, the women worked in 6 regionally established groups to develop their strategic vision and mission, to analyse Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and turning this analysis into concrete action plans for immediate implementation. Based on this work it was agreed that three regional networks (for
the South, Centre and North of the country) was a much more realistic
plan that one, big national network, and it was agreed that all women
will return to their community, share the results of the festival, carry
out a baseline description of women´s situation as per the Declaration´s
12 objectives, and meet – region by region – in September to present and
analyse the result of the baseline, and to develop a detailed action
plan, including budgets and agreements on who will carry forward the
actual work. While tradition and women´s heavy workloads were identified as two of the core reasons for women´s limited involvement with the community radios, training, exposure and own determination was seen as probably the best place to start reversing the situation. The regional action plans therefore include: (i) Training, (ii) sharing of experience, (iii) procurement of documentation on women´s rights and (iv) information on the many important socio-economic areas important for the development of women´s opportunities, as well as (v) programme exchange.
24 women from the 8 immediate UNESCO partner community radio stations met in Chimoio July 8-18 this year for a thematical seminar, preparing the community programmers to effectively do their job: to plan, develop, record, present and evaluate programmes on women´s lives in their communities. More than half of the women participating could tell that this
training was the first course, seminar or workshop in which they had
taken part outside of their town – and that it had changed a lot of
their perceptions on the role and possibilities of women: “I never knew
that I, a woman, have the same legal rights and obligations as a man!”
was one of the important testimonies during the final, festive closing
ceremony.
Namaacha was the host for a gathering of journalists July 3-5, who met to discuss how to cover effectively the difficult issue of HIV/AIDS…..
The last of three regional training courses on civic education in
community radios during the election periods took place in Nampula ….. Two of the UNESCO partner community radio stations, namely the radio in Cuamba and that in Dondo, took part in a Pan African Symposium on Community Multimedia Centres (CMC) which took place in Dakar, Senegal June 12-17 this year. A CMC is defined as a center, including at least both a community radio and a telecentre – as such facilitating communitation for the community at different levels. Based on intensive exchanges with the other 60 participants from all over Africa, the two UNESCO partner stations will during the next six months work on how to turn these new, exciting perspectives into a local, Mozambican reality.
The media project has entered into an exciting start of the project, supporting the three week intensive secondment of
Media
Development Project
c/o UNESCO, P.O.Box 1397 Maputo, Mozambique |
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