Fernanda Maria has worked for 12 years in Radio Liberdade, a community radio in Dili, the capital of Timer Leste. Radio Liberdade works with the 'Fundacão Media Development Centre' working to support women's voices in the media and the voices of other underrepresented groups.

Radio Liberdade is one of some 15 community radio stations, struggling for survival, as Fernanda tells us - but she and her station have some ideas about how to turn the stations sustainable! Despite the challenges, new stations appear, not least because the spoken word is so important in a reality with and only 60 % literacy rate.

Since 2016 Fernanda has worked on a special programme on 'Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls and Gender-Based Violence' which she tells about in the podcast. Presently she works with Radio Liberdade to provide Journalism Training on Gender Sensitive Reporting.

Timor-Leste's road to independence - achieved on 20 May 2002 - was long and traumatic in their struggle for self-determination. When their Portuguese colonial masters withdrew in 1975 – as they did in all other colonies including Mozambique - where one of the other radio women in this podcast series is from - Indonesia claimed the territory for itself and suppressed the independence movement. The UN took over the administration and supervised the territory's transition to independence in 2002.

As Fernanda explains in our conversation, domestic and gender based violence is extremely high in the country – close to 60 % of the women report to have been abused physically, so the focus of the radio station and the foundation – fundacão – which started it, is to work on ways of limiting violence against women. Radio Liberdade therefore works with a focus on Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls and Gender-Based Violence, and this is also the radio programme Fernanda is engaged with.

Palmira Velasco is a senior journalist, who has been at the forefront of democratic journalism in Mozambique, where she in 1987 started as a reporter at the big, state-run daily newspaper Notícias.

With the peace accord signed in 1992, after an 18 year war, intercepted by a few free years of socialism, Palmira in 1994 joined a group of journalists that started DEMOS, the first independent weekly.

This stood on the shoulders of a 1991 new press law, approved by government after the new democratic constitution (1990) and a year before the final signature to peace. This is how central a free media was to the standard bearers of the new Mozambique. Palmira become a senior reporter in Demos, and an editor, where she had the opportunity to travel the region and he world widely.

During this time she co-initiated the Mozambican Women in Mass Media Association (AMCS) of which she was the executive director for 12 years. It was as an initiative of AMCS that Palmira co-initiated Mozambique’s first women’s radio: N’thiyana, meaning ‘Women’ in Emacua, one of the 132 languages in Mozambique, mostly spoken in one of the most populous provinces of Nampula.

As a Community Radio Director Palmira was one of the driving forces in N’thiyana, and in the podcast she explains why a women’s radio was important and what some of the major challenges were.

Since June 2016, Palmira works as a Programme Officer in Natural Resources and Gender section of the civil society based organisation: SKELEKANI. She focuses on research on Gender and the impact of extraction in the communities affected by the impact of extractive industry. Palmira continues to use her journalistic past when she writes stories about the struggling communities – children and women - published in different Magazines in Mozambique and at SEKELEKANI’s sites www.civilinfo.org.mz

Jimena Lopez, broadcaster and assembly member of the community radio La Tribu FM, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Jimena Lopez has been a part of the station for nearly ten years, where she has had many different roles. Right now she is a part of the station’s communication team, responsible for Social media and other communication activities. She is also in the Station’s assembly made up by 20 core people, responsible for overall management, which meets up every second month.

La Tribu started in 1989 and has been going uninterrupted since. Since 2006, when the new communication and media law[1] in Argentina legalized community media as the third sector with íts own regulations, La Tribu has been on air, legally. Jimena says that whereas the station is not a women’s station, it has a feminist approach in most of what it does.

La Tribu is run by a collective of around 20 assembly members, who take turns on the many different administrative, practical and programmatic areas. The assembly members also work in the editorial groups, which also count many community members who come to the station, and take part in the ongoing training activities. Often, they are then, thereafter, effectively, softly integrated into the editorial teams, if and when they so wish.

The station therefore never has a shortage of community broadcasters – and considers itself, sustainable. Part of the financial sustainability is secured through providing access to organisations who want to run their own programmes. When within the values and principles of the station, they can do so, and they pay for airtime and for rent of the studios. This secures a minimum financial basis along with projects that the station is a part of.

La Tribu also has a cultural space in their radio-house, which has a bar and hosts different cultural events. The radio and the cultural space complement each other very well. It helps the radio to remain a lively place, where all who want to approach the station with issues, stories – or a desire to become one of the team, easily can access.

Jimena estimates that Argentina has 2000 community radio stations, which have mushroomed since the new 2006-law was passed. They are all different – both due to the place where they are situated (big city? Rural area?) and the local culture. La Tribu is very active in the Latin American AMARC network[2], where stations from the continent meet regularly in the big, general group – and where an active women’s network run projects together and meet up.

Jimena Lopez has a Social Communications Degree, is radio producer and host as well as Radio workshop coordinator. Jimena is also a Product Manager at an insurance company.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimena-l%C3%B3pez-costantini-4359174b

[1] https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2009-11-23/argentina-new-media-law/
[2] https://www.amarcalc.org/

Catherine Vhutuza is a broadcaster in the Ndau-speaking Vemuganga community radio in Chipinge. Catherine focused on strengthening the voice and rights of women including in areas of land rights and violence against women.

Vemuganga Community Radio Vemuganga Community Radio (VCR) is a registered Trust established to heighten the creation of a reliable and direct platform for the people of Zimbabwe and in particular the Ndau speaking people of Chipinge in Manicaland to enter into dialogue and analytical discussion among themselves and decide for themselves on changes that affect their lives so that they become active in implementing them. The stimulus has been to create a stage for sharing, researching and disseminating information that promote the integration and social cohesion that cultivates sustainable community development through the promotion of Ndau language, culture, norms and values. The initiative was registered as a Trust in 2012(MA373/12) before it was awarded an operating licence by the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ) in November 2021.

The vision of the initiative: A self – believing community that actively participates in the dissemination and preservation of socio-economic and cultural knowledge from its surroundings.

The Mission of the initiative: A non-profit and inclusive community platform that exists to collect, share and broadcast information that promotes sustainable development in Chipinge and ensure people’s right to information and community participation by expressing the voice and thoughts of grassroots people in the development process.

Vemuganga Community Radio and Geographical Area Vemuganga Community Radio Initiative is licenced to cover Checheche, Chibuwe and Chipinge urban where it is covering 22 wards of Chipinge with an approximately 50 000 households and a population of 212 980. It aims to enrich the livelihood of the Ndau people, through the content that is created by the people and for the people of the Ndau community.

COME JOIN US!!!

I met Kadi Souley Bonkano in Niger’s capital city Niamey first time in 2007, when she was a broadcaster in the local community radio, Radio Anfani and again in 2013 in the office of APAC, Association des professionnelles africaines de la communication, the Media Women’s Association there, where I was preparing a new project for the Danish Embassy, including women and media issues. Kadi was preparing a Women’s Community Radio station back then, and we stayed in touch.

Kadi all along worked to develop the women’s radio based in a local women’s association she had founded, called FAHAM. Faham is a word borrowed from Arabic which means understanding. And Kadi wants to ensure education and ‘understanding’ – also of women’s perspectives, experiences, dreams and lives through FAHAM. Faham was created in 2005 as an apolitical, non-denominational and non-profit national association, focusing on ways to ensure equity and greater inclusion of the voices of women living in semi-urban and rural areas. The association soon realised that to achieve their goals, community radio, which Kadi had experience with from earlier, would be not only a good way, it became a priority, and FAHAM got a broadcast license for the radio in 2010.

FAHAM had the support of a former MP, who secured free offices in the suburbs of Niamey, and from Kadi’s sister, the station got a computer, a printer and a photocopier which both was used for training and functioned as a small telecentre, allowing the volunteers to have an income while waiting for the installation of the equipment.

FAHAM therefore started training women leaders in the community to become community broadcasters, and identified an acute need for a community school, which the association started. It is for children 3-5 years old and financed by the parents, who pay 15 euros per year. With the school in place, it was easier for the community radio volunteers to spend time at the station.

Whereas the school is still in place, the station closed down after heavy rains flooded the association's office and they had to realise that the location of the offices could not guarantee the stability and safety of the radio that they needed. The broadcasters continued producing programmes which were broadcast on other existing stations. Activities were suspended in 2019 when COVID 19 arrived.

Last year, in 2022, FAHAM started a reorganization of the association and the radio-focus. FAHAM intends to be the 1st web radio in Niger by women and for women, ensuring dialogue for women to share and act together, breaking down constraints on women’s access to media and public spaces. The station is intended to contribute to strengthening the image of rural women and it intends to reach and impact on 25,000 to 30,000 households. Again, FAHAM trains women leaders – the future broadcasters – and together they have worked to identify women's information needs in the community.

But all this Kadi should tell herself – Being francophone we much appreciate her going out of her way to talk with us in English – the language of this podcast series. – so, over to Kadi, Come join us!!!

Hi, we’re back: Women on the global community airwaves! Today's episode brings us to Southern Africa, to Zambia’s capital Lusaka, where I talk with Jubiel Zulu, an award-winning journalist and media and communication specialist. Now working as a District Information Officer in Zambia's Eastern Province. When we spoke, Jubiel was still in Kwithu FM, in the capital Lusaka, where she has worked for the past ten years. Here she integrated issues of importance to women and women’s lives in the general programming: political, economic, social, cultural.

In our conversation Jubiel gives examples of how the programming she engages in support women’s beginning change in their lives, while there is still a lot to do. And while our conversation focuses on here work as a radio journalist, Jubiel continues with that same focus as a district information officer in Zambia’s Eastern Province. Through TV, newspapers and online, she informs the communities – and not least the women – about the many issues of importance. As she says in our conversation, there is so much basic information that people do not have access to. One example of her work as a District Information Officer (DIO) Chadiza district is this article where she tells about fistula, a terrible, life changing condition suffered by no less than 25% of Zambia’s women (link). The women of the district are lucky to have a DIO like her!

Jubiel has a bachelor of Arts in Mass communication and Public Relations from Cavendishi University, and she is Vice President of the Zambia Institute of Independent Media Alliance, a ZAMWA (Zambia Association of Women in the Media) board member and has won both international and national awards for her journalism.

Kachan K. Malik (PhD) is a university professor at the University of Hyderabad and is a Faculty Fellow with the ‘UNESCO Chair on Community Media’, there, where she unfolds her work in support of community media in India and in South Asia. Kanchan presents herself as a researcher, learning from the powerful people building community media where her journeys take her.

Kanchan has been with the Department of Communication, UoH, since 2007, where she also served as Head from 2017-20. She has been a Faculty Fellow with the ‘UNESCO Chair on Community Media’ since 2011, an Editor of the e-newsletter – ‘CR News’ and the Vice-Chair for the Ethics Working Group of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR).

With a dual Master’s in Economics and Mass Communication, Kanchan worked as a journalist with ‘The Economic Times’, New Delhi, before settling for a career in academics.

For over two and a half decades, Kanchan K. Malik’s academic interests and endeavours have been in Community and Alternative Media; Women and Community Media; Journalism Studies; and Media Ethics. She has worked with national and international research projects and published scholarly papers and chapters on media interventions by non-governmental organisations for empowerment at the grassroots level. Her research has also contributed to policy advocacy efforts for community radio in India.

Prof. Malik has co-authored with Prof. Vinod Pavarala the much-cited book ‘Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India’ (Sage: 2007) to which she refers in our conversation. Their other co-edited book is titled ‘Community Radio in South Asia: Reclaiming the Airwaves’ (Routledge: 2020). She recently worked on the manual ‘Strengthening Gender Sensitive Practices and Programming in Community Radio’ (UNESCO, 2021).

Olena Zinenko from Kharkiv in Ukraine, takes us in this episode through the recent media history of Ukraine, where communication - and culture - has gotten a whole new importance in the present war situation, where also new voices are heard in new ways. As she says: the state media, the commercial and oligarch media create media products – she and her colleagues focus in their media production on processes, on creating understanding and of becoming. A peace activist and a media consultant at the Centre of Gender Culture’s Media Laboratory, Olina has worked with multimedia reportage workshops and creative journalism.

Olena had to leave Kharkiv with her husband and two daughters when their city was attacked – fleeing first to Poland and thereafter to Germany, where she at the time of the interview (January 2023) was based in Frankfurt an der Oder. Here she continues her research at Frankfurt’s Viadrina University, while waiting to return home.

Olena in this interview stresses that the war has brought the Ukrainian people together as one, and that culture is at the core of much media work by women. Olena uses her social media presence to translate the important, hard news from Ukraine in English to her broad group of followers, and she shares a heart breaking observation – and positive in the midst of the horror of the war: when reading the posts of her women followers on the social media, she becomes relieved when they begin to search for manicure and other things related to keeping themselves and their bodies in their new realities - this means that they HAVE found a place to live, a school for their children and have food on the table – only then will they begin to think of other things.

Olena Zinenko is senior lecturer and Ph.D. researcher at the Chair of Media Communiation, Sociology Department, V.N. Karazin's Kharkiv National University in Ukraine. Her research interest lies in a rethinking of the approaches to the media representation of the public events in the context of social and political transformations.

Read more here: https://progressive.org/latest/olena-zinenko-trust-in-people-abramian-220504/ https://www.europa-uni.de/en/forschung/institut/institut_europastudien/IFES-Team/gastwissenschaftler_innen/index.html

Professor (PhD) of radio, researcher, networker and beyond and above all a feminist activist, Caroline Mitchell has since she joined 'Women's Airwaves' worked to turn her professional and social engagement real, through strengthening women and women's voices with a focus to ensure space, justice and empowerment for and of women. Fem FM - an 8-day radio licence in 1992 - co-created by Caroline, planned for a year, housed in a borrowed 4-storey building, filled with the 200 women (two hundred women, Caroline insists) who had taken holidays or in other ways made the dream of a lifetime come true: UK's first all women's radio station. In this podcast Caroline tells about Fem FM and all that followed - and she shares towards the end of the interview her advice on the non-negotiables when wanting to ensure a proper space for women in a new - or existing - community radio station.

Caroline is Professor of Radio and Participation at University of Sunderland, UK. Her research and practice are centred on community media production and cultures of transnational community radio and women's/feminist radio. She specialises in using mapping and participatory action research methods. Caroline has published widely about women and radio, including the edited volume ‘Women and Radio: Airing Differences’, (Routledge, 2000).

More background and links can be found at her site on https://empowerhouse.dk/women-on-the-global-community-airwaves/

Saritha Thomas || Managing Trustee, PPC India | Director, PPC UK

PPC's founder and driving force, Saritha has nurtured a lifelong love for radio. In this episode Saritha takes us through her own voyage into and with community radio as a people's communication and development platform, and we learn about the community radio station Mandakini Ki Awaz in Bhaduj village in Uttarakhand state in the far north of India, in the Himalaya's, neighbouring Nepal. We learn about how it became known as a women's radio station, not by Saritha's design, but as the women were the most interested, courageous and bold, engaging with the station from the beginning 10 years ago.

Today the PPC counts five partner community radio stations, including the newest: Sona FM in Salem in the South Eastern Indian state of Tamil Nadu - on air for just four month at the time of recording the interview (March 2023).

An alumna of Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai's, Social Media & Communications programme, Saritha has worked in India, UAE and the UK. Her time in commercial radio - spanning popular radio networks such as, Radio City, the Arabian Radio Network, BBC World Service Radio and BBC Radio 4 - gave way to full-time social entrepreneurship, and community radio activism.A fellow at The School of Social Entrepreneurs, London, Saritha was the only member of her Graduating class with an overseas social enterprise: PPC.
Saritha believes in the life-changing capacity of community radio, which offers isolated communities an accessible, binding social medium. She hopes that the medium, which places at its hearts a voice unencumbered by the prejudices of class, caste and creed, will offer these communities a way forward: eroding a range of social evils, simply by being inclusive, and building stronger, forward-thinking communities.