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Communication for Social Change Consortium

Communication for local empowerment becomes increasingly important, according to partner organization the Rockefeller Foundation, in a media environment where as of 1997 annual sales well in excess of ten billion dollars with an increasing percentage generated outside the US come from a handful of global companies dominating world media markets. The foundation funds projects and has pulled together more than 200 committed groups using communications for development. The Communication for Social Change Consortium is a spearheading partner organization, which attempts to give voice to those previously unheard in global communications, and publicizes and expands related studies. They bring together activists, academics, filmmakers, journalists, funders, and electronic communications expert service providers, and professional communicators. They envision as a stated goal to "change thinking, practice, and the study of communication so that people living in poverty can manage the social change they need to improve their lives." By the year 2015, they hope communication for social change principles are understood and incorporated into most major development initiatives.

Communication for Empowerment

The United Nations Development Program believes that information and communication focused interventions are central to development goals, which can 'only occur if the information needs of all citizens including those on the margins of societies are met.' They call this process of supporting and expanding communications for the use of social development, or development communications, Communication for Empowerment. The United Nations partners with organizations that support their goal of development communications. They note through recognition by key development actors that it is a fundamental task, and encourage the communication initiatives from all over the developing world which are designed to empower people. They explain that information and communication should be an increasing priority in the world of the UN Development Program, and aim to analyze how media and communication effect the ability of people living in poverty to make their voices heard in society, in support of that goal.

Many communications projects that encouraged social development have occured all over the developing world with the efforts of groups, partner organizations, and even sometimes motivated inividuals. They have blossomed into important sources of social change as well as local independent media. Some detailed examples from around the world, including those in Nepal, India, South Africa, and Brazil can be further examined. Additionally, following with a broader look at the variety of partners and projects with these aims can be useful to show the diversity in goals and successes.

radio development in Nepal

The International Programme for the Developement of Communication, in cooperation with UNESCO and other NGOs provided equipment and technical assistance for the first independent radio station in South Asia. Radio Sagarmatha in Nepal intersected with the slow government relaxation of government control of airwaves, and the support it found allowed it flourish in Patan, a city adjacent to Kathmandu and signalled by a long mast of antenna in a three story building. Later, the Himal Assocation, Worldview Nepal, and the Nepal Press Institute joined, exploring issues such as prostitution, AIDS, pollution, abortion, child labor, and consumer safety, through investigative journalism and local interviews from a cross section of the population.

Development communication video in India

Video SEWA is a collection of women in India in the province of Gujarat who have produced over one hundred videos, thirty nine of which are completed and availale to the public. This stands for the Self Employed Women's Association, where twenty women most of whom were illiterate took the workshop where they learned to make videos, which were subquently screened for audiences ranging from one person such as a local authority to a target of hundreds of thousands. In one film, for example, a fifteen minute program addressed to Gujarati women reached an audience of approximately half a million women through cassette playbacks and was broadcast on state television. Some are advocacy tools such as the film Manek Chowk, and others are training productions with topics such as building smokeless stoves. The women learn to conceptualize a script, shoot, record sound, and edit, but many of them are actually illiterate when it comes to reading and writing, showing what an incredible empowerment tool it can be. One dalit woman describes how her video making elevated her status when people began to recognize her in the community. The inspiration for SEWA is Gandhian policy where members organize for social change through the path of nonviolence and truth. They organize women to enter the mainstream of the economy, struggling against the constraints imposed on them by society and the econoomy. It has shown the power of the medium and its potential for organizing the poor by raising awareness and bringing issues to the forefront. On a practical basis, how to treat diarreha and how to use SEWA's savings and credit services as well as supporting their legal actions have also been addressed.

Kayapo videos in Brazil

Going around the world to Brazil, in 1985 the first project of indigenous media in Brazil went underway to enable the members of the Kayapo indigenous community to familiarize themselve with video technology as a tool to preserve their traditional culture, their rituals, dances and songs, and for future generations. Monica Frota, a young Brazilian photographer and filmmaker started the video initiative Mekaron Opoi D 'joi, meaning 'he who creates images' in the native Ge language spoken by the Kayapo, which they worked on for two years. The Kayapo live in the State of Para in the Amazon River Basin of Brazilian tropical rainforest in six reserves covering a combined area about the size of Portugal, with 14 tribes left as of 1993 with a population of about five thousand. When gold was found on their land, their contact with the outside world increased. The Kayapo integrated some practices and tools of modernity into their lives, and even used radio to communicate with other Kayapo groups within the Xingu Indigenous Park. Later the video become a tool to seek political and financial support to compel Brazil to legally recognize their territory and their rights to control its resources. The Chief commented that many photographers had come in the past but never gave anything in return or attempted to teach anything, but now they could record their rituals for their children. Another commented that they could learn the things of the Brazilians in order to hold their land and protect their culture; initally the Kayapo had been exchanging messages between villages and documenting their own rituals. However, soon they started to exchange political speeches. They started to document their protests against the Brazilian state whom they charged with encroachments upon their land and society. They documented, for example, the agreements signed with government representatives, as well as demonstrations held at the Presidential Palace. They made the cover of Time magazine when they denounced the construction of a hydro-electric dam in Altamira which would lead to flooding their land. They gained an image as the 'high-tech' indians which quickly gained the front pages of important journals along with this exposure. On occasions such as political demonstrations and cermonies being staged for Brazilian or international audiences and documented by nonindigenous TV or video crews, Terence Turner, a prominent anthropologist in the case, also notes they mad sure their camerapeople were on salient display. He reflects, "From the moment they acquired video cameras of their own, the Kayapo have made a point of making video records of their major political confrontations with the national society."

Community Radio in Africa

Other social probems have also been addressed in other parts of the world including Africa. In South Africa, a form of 'edutainment' helped educate people about diarrhea, HIV/AIDS, and other issues with their soap opera Soul City. Set in a Johannesburg township, it has become of the most popular soap operas in the country even as it transmits important social messages. In South Africa, dergulation has spurred the creation of more than 80 community radio stations broadcasting in fifteen languages, which have also made serious inroads into well established broadcast markets as well. They provide a voice to make demands as well as information for their lives. For example, Radio Zibonele in Cape Town is a community radio station which drew on their audience's anger to play a key role in mediating and resolving the township's gang warfare surrounding the taxi business. They cover montly operating costs through ads and sponsors but do not accept money from cigarette or alchohol producers, and do all work with four paid staff and thirty volunteers who who from a truck container broadcasting with a 20-watt transmitter. Still, according to one survey they have an audience of about 100,000, nearly a third of all listeners to community radio in the Western Cape. In 1997 it went from having gone on the air illegally under South Africa's aparteid government, to broadcasting five days a week for 19 hours a day. The better community radio stations such as Radio Zibonele focus on audience participation, with new programming coming from ideas that listeners call in themselves. This helped avert a strike when the local minister of education mediated a meeting with affected parties involved in school overcrowding and announced a solution on air the next day. Important issues are discussed in real time on the air there as well as stations other stations such as Cape Flats Bush Radio. In Kampala, Uganda, as another example of capitalizing on social usefulness, the FM station Capital Radio attracts some of the highest audiences for its Capital Doctor program, which provides advice and information on issues of sex, HIV/AIDS, and other health issues.

regional projects

Another example of analyzing development issues from an African perspective, EcoNews Africa is an NGO that reports not only on a local level, but also regionally and and nationally to contribute to global solutions. Registered in Kenya, they have operations in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan. The Kenya Community Media Network provides a forum for media professionals interested in promoting the growth of community communications in Kenya, advocating for a regulatory framework that enhances the sector of community media. The East African Pilot Project helps some local communities in remote villages without access to telephones or grid electricity set up horizontal communication structures. COMNESA, the Community Media Network for Eastern and Southern Africa, is a regional platform for the same ideals, thus expanding the scope of the intended operation. In South America, a similar move was made by the Association of Community Radio Broadcasters in March 1996 to provide independent and community radio stations in Latin America with local news stories and other information useful to civil society known as Pulsar.

Variety and scope in communications and development projects

Other noteworthy projects which expanded communications access and usage in a socially helpful way have taken place also from building democracy to building internet resources. Some interesting examples include the Grameen Telecom Village Phone Program in Bangladesh providing cellular phone service as the first micro-enterprise based on information and communication services; the Video and Community Dreams Project in Egypt which in partnership with Communication for Change provided community video training, as they did in India as well as Indonesia, China and Nigeria; Village Knowledge Centers in Chennai India where internet technologies were used to provide information to the rural population on agricultural and health issues; Indonesia Capacity building of Local Radio with UNESCO and twenty five local stations used radio, email, and internet to focus on democracy, elections, and human rights after 32 years of the Suharto regime where radio stations were not allowed to broadcast local news; the Nakaseke Multipurpose Community Telecentre and Library Pilot Project in Uganda (Kampala) using computers and internet with the help of UNESCO partnering with Uganda Telecom Inc. and the Public Libraries board to provide internet access and training.

Current projects

Some projects that are current include working with WaterAid in training journalists in Mali and Burkina Faso on water and sanitation issues; the Communication for Empowerment program to accelerate democratic participation in national development processes in six countries of Africa and Asia with funding from the U.N. Democracy Fund; the UNDP Communication for Development consortium to train regional offices in communication for development; and supporting the management of the Nelson Mandela Foundation Dialouge Programme to strengthen their Community Conversations, which they call dialouge for justice.

As Alfonso Dragon can be summed up in commenting in the Journal of Development Communications, there is more at play in the vast sea of inequalities that straddle the global south than the digital divide-he calls the situation 'Prometheus Riding a Cadillac,' where the progress and civilization that technology can drive into a society is not a cure all by any means. Even so, he is well known as a champion of communications for development because he demonstrates in great depth that it at least can ignite the fundamental spark for the fire.