A unique light in the community

Earlier in February, Irshad was one of 6 men and 7 women from villages near Charsadda to attend a community-centred media workshop facilitated by Hazeen from Amplifying Voices Pakistan.

For Irshad, using local resources to tackle local problems comes naturally. He has developed an unusual community service. In the rural village where he lives, near Charsadda in Pakistan, there are few street lights. However, funeral processions are sometimes done at night-time. Seeing this issue, Irshad started to offer his services as a mobile streetlight – driving ahead of the procession with lamps mounted on his motorbike rickshaw.

The Urdu writing on the motorbike translates: Free IRSHAD LIGHT SERVICE

After the training workshop, Irshad told Hazeen that he loved the community-centred media approach because it brings people together to explore root causes of local issues and tackle them together. He especially loved learning how to create audio programmes that would be played on a local FM radio station. Chatting to Hazeen afterwards, he said, “this will be like bringing us from darkness into light. We had not thought that we could do these things.”

We can see that Irshad already provides light to his community during the dark times in people’s lives. We are excited to see what more can be achieved as he and the other trainees start using media to amplify local voices in their communities.