|
|
 |
Radio assesses community change in Mozambique
An expanding network of community radios is strengthening civil society and supporting community development and social change in Mozambique. The increase from one community radio station in 1994 to nearly fifty in 2005 means that more than a third of the population now lives within reach of a station. Regular, sustainable, impact assessments are essential if these stations are to be effective.
Tutsirai Maura works
at Rádio Comunitária
Macequece, in the central
Manica province of
Mozambique. Tutsirai
is one of the 50 regular
contracted volunteer
community programme
producers. With the
Women’s Collective,
Tutsirai produces weekly
programmes on issues
such as empowering
women to work
effectively for the changes
needed in their lives.
Photo by Birgitte Jallov
The UNESCO/UNDP Mozambique Media Development Project set out to determine whether community radio stations promote democracy, active involvement of communities and allow people to set their own development agendas. They also wanted to ensure that volunteer community radio producers would be able to carry out assessments by themselves beyond the project's end. They designed and then used what was labelled a 'barefoot' impact assessment, so called because the methodology was easy to apply and produced understandable results.
The impact assessment focussed on three sets of questions:
- Is the radio station working effectively internally and do the volunteers have contracts, rights and clearly defined duties?
- Do the programmes respond to the interests of the public? Are they well researched, using culturally relevant formats such as story telling, songs, proverbs and music? Are they considered good and effective by listeners?
- Does the radio station create desired development and social change (determined by the original baseline research) within the community?
'Barefoot' impact assessments of eight of Mozambique's community radio stations revealed both positive results and potential problems:
- Areas of Dondo, a town in the centre waiting for electricity for years, got it following an intense one month community radio campaign.
- The number of deaths caused by cholera in Dondo during annual flooding in 2004 dropped drastically to zero because during a cholera epidemic the radio broadcast information about, among others, the distribution of chlorine and the importance of putting it in the water.
- The number of people seeking HIV testing increased significantly after radio programmes created an environment where the subject could be discussed openly. Working on and listening to radio programmes also helped young people build up confidence to negotiate practicing safe sex.
- The radios' civic education campaigns resulted in increased participation, heightened debate and community control of election procedures.
- In one case most management functions had been filled by people from the Catholic Church and the assessment discovered that the radio was beginning to be referred to within the community as a Catholic radio, which was potentially divisive.
- One radio station had a high turnover among volunteers, motivating the radio management to discover why they were all leaving and what could be done.
'Barefoot' impact assessments can ensure that community radio stations are on track with their objectives. They can also provide feedback to the communities in which they are working and demonstrate their credibility to local and international funding partners. They need to be simple enough to be sustainable without external assistance and systematic, making sure that impact is assessed at all three levels outlined above.
Birgitte Jallov
Krogegaard
Gudhjemvej 62
DK-3760 Gudhjem
Denmark
T +45 56 498378
F +45 56 498328
birgitte.jallov@mail.dk
'Assessing community change: development of a 'barefoot' impact assessment methodology', by Birgitte Jallov, Radio Journal, July 2005
Doing a ‘barefoot’ impact assessment
| Area of assessment |
What to do |
| Ensuring that the radio
works effectively as an
institution and that all
groups within the
community are involved
(twice yearly) |
Use a checklist:
- Staff: any vacancies? Are responsibilities clear?
How long have people been involved?
What training has been received?
- Volunteer structure: how many? Duration of
involvement? Training received?
- Work/action plans: do they exist? Are they used?
Status of budgets, accounts, time-plans?
- Programmes: content variation, relevance, local production,
source of content?
- Community involvement and participation:
who comes to meetings? Who doesn’t?
- Sustainability: status of partnerships? Fundraising initiatives?
- Satisfaction: of staff, volunteers and community members
|
| The impact of community
radio content
(ongoing assessment) |
- Conduct informal interviews while out preparing programmes
or doing other radio work
- Register opinions of listeners that telephone in
- Register and analyse letters received from listeners
- Register and analyse responses to questions printed on the back
of returned message slips (used to announce births, deaths,
community events, meetings and so on)
- Conduct interviews with people living near individual
programmers
- Conduct interviews with people during major public events
|
| The impact of radio on
community development
(ongoing and annual
assessments) |
- Conduct individual interviews
- Conduct focus group interviews (distinct profiles, such as
young women, young men, women in rural areas,
men in rural areas, women in town-like areas,
men in town-like areas), with 6-10 people per group
- Keep identified problems at the forefront of organisation
and planning (in Mozambique these are: food security;
health; and security & infrastructure)
|
|
|
|
|
FREE Information Delivery services from id21:
|
|
Right-to-Reply:
Comment on any of the
issues raised in this Insights.
Read what others
have said.
|
|
