News

 

 

Community Radio a Tool
For Change

Kenyan resource centre hopes to start own station

Carmelle Wolfson, Special to Canadian University Press

 

UGUNIJA, Kenya—If you’re lucky,
you can get two radio stations in rural
Kenya: one playing Top 40 hip hop and
another Christian-influenced program.
The Ugunja Community Resource
Centre hopes to change that for the
small village of about 17,000 in the
Siaya district near Uganda.

“We would use community radio as
a tool for empowerment or advocacy to

 

 

accelerate various information within
our area of work,” says Rose Ong’ ech,
advocacy and networking director at
UCRC.

“Through community radio we
can give the right information and not
stigmatization for those living positively
with HIV/AIDS. From there, their life
could be prolonged,” says Ong’ech
who recently returned from a Canadian

Crossroads International exchange to
Kitchener, Ont.

In addition to programming focused on
reducing HIV/AIDS stigma, the UCRC
would like to educate the community on
proper nutrition with local indigenous
foods, as well as clean water and
sanitation.

“When they access clean water it
helps their health. This is not only for
the HIV positive, but for everybody,”
says Rachel Adipo, adaptive research
director at the centre.

CKLN 88.1 community radio in
Toronto and the Journalists for Human
Rights chapter at Ryerson University are
raising funds for the project. They were
able to purchase a minidisc recorder, a
set of minidisks and a microphone with
the money from a December seventh
event. The UCRC still has a long list
of items to purchase, including a good
unidirectional studio microphone and a
soundboard mixer.

The centre is also waiting on the
government to grant them a radio
communication license.

The Ugunja community radio project
faces a number of obstacles. Damas
Ogwe, director of disaster management
at the UCRC, says the key challenge is
finding staff and volunteers to fuel the
station.

“We do have one or two people who
are skilled in journalism and audio

editing, but we need to have more
people who are trained, not just as

staff, but also as volunteers out in the
community. We want to use members of
the community to generate information
so that we can make sure that it’s a
community for the community.”

Sarah Reaburn, a Ryerson University
nursing student and member of
Journalists for Human Rights Ryerson,
plans to visit Ugunja for six weeks
this spring. She would like to use
her education to help with health
information systems.

“T feel like I could learn a lot from
the people there and bring that back to
share with people here,” Reaburn says.
“T like the structure of the UCRC. It’s
not hierarchical. They take the needs
of people in their community into
consideration. They’re really committed
to sustainable development.”

The operation takes up eight
buildings in the Ugunja market. “The
UCRC started [in 1988] as a small
initiative. The idea didn’t emerge from
somebody from Canada or Australia,
but from the community members
themselves,” says Ong’ech.

Now they have a women’s bike
repair centre; a telecentre, where
community members can learn basic
computer skills; a community-funded
credit union offering small loans;
and a technological institute, which
gives training in both traditional and
alternative trades.

Ong’ ech has high hopes for the future of
the community radio.

“As the UCRC continues to grow
and continues to get involved in
different projects and ideas, I hope the
community will be able to pick up these
same ideas and be able to implement
them to realize transformation in their
lives,” she says.

 

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