A new studio has been set up in AID’s JP Community Technical College in Garhwa where the program is edited. Song, drams and interview are all recorded in different villages. All the reporters and technical people are from the same region and have been trained to handle programs. This has proved that there is nothing that the local population cannot do if presented with the opportunity and resources to do so. The community radio program has shown that local people have the will and hence they have now shown the way to others.
 

 Strategic and Technical Approach

AID pursued the following practical strategies while implementing community radio initiatives.

• It is a community led, community run community managed and community-controlled program with continuous review, lesson learning and sustained improvement of strategies and practices.

• The technical team of the project facilitates and provides catalytic support for the local community to conceive, develop and contribute to the program’s development.

• Community empowerment, strengthening community based organisations and its processes to seize their problems and tackle it at their level.

• Building solidarity and strategic pro-poor alliances for claiming their right to health, right to education, right to government services, right to water, right to food, freedom from exploitation and influencing governance and government policies.

• Using community radio as an advocacy tool to influence decision makers and government authorities using the voices of the poor and a powerful means to demand a right to information entitlement.

• Engaging the government using community radio to inform them of the ground realities and to influence them to make governance pro- poor, pro- women and pro-rural.

• Promote gender equity and equality and equal opportunities for women, tribes and untouchable communities to promote social inclusion and integration
   

 Project Framework

• The idea of the project is to use community radio and ICT as means of democratising the access to information and media. At present, the poor have no say or voice in decision making connected with the media. They are passive players. Through this project the poor are able to play a greater role as active agents of social change and total transformation.

• Promoting citizenship rights, civic engagement and action using the community radio for solving their local problems.

• It is used as a powerful tool for learning through radio, mobilising the poor, engaging the poor in debates and discussions on matters of their concerns.

• Promoting people-to-people connection, creating links with the government and information sources, sharing and exchange of information and building strategic alliances with forces supporting pro-poor policy and programs.

• Use it to create an understanding of the underlying causes of poverty, discrimination and inequality within the system and to support them to find better ways to tackle these problems.

• Create a demand for various government services and to make maximum use of the available programs and seeking a right to information from the government.

• Promote participatory governance, social justice and linking the poor with existing policies of government.