Refugees act to get vital information

When the Soot Semee team arrive in the refugee settlement in Omugo zone these days, they find friends ready and waiting for the next podcasts.

Listener group leaders swap last week’s memory card (SD Card) with last week’s podcast for a new SD Card with new podcast material. They take these back to their neighbourhood blocks where groups of ten or more people gather round the speakerbox to listen. Before Covid, people crowded together to listen. For now, people space themselves out with chairs to observe safe distancing from each other.

 

But the first person the Soot Semee team see on the road is Eddie* who waits with his phone. He is not part of one of the listener groups, but he asks the team to download the weekly podcast to his phone. He says he is waiting to hear the weekly news from South Sudan and the part of the podcast with advice on farming.

Soot Semee podcasts are proving their value, as more and more community members are finding ways to access the podcasts. The group of young people below clubbed together to buy a speakerbox, and take it to a nearby neighbourhood to share it with others from their language group. They also started recording their own material in their own dialect for the Soot Semee team to use in the podcasts.

Before the project started, our partner CDC (Uganda) who operate the Soot Semee projects listened to community members and learned that lack of reliable information was a huge need in the refugee settlements, particularly reliable information about the situation in South Sudan where most refugees have come from. They also worked with local community leaders and NGOs to assess the households that were most vulnerable due to lack of access to information or media, and CDC distributed speakerboxes to those households.

We are excited to see that Soot Semee podcasts are valued far beyond the initial groups that received speakerboxes. It also confirms to us that reliable information and locally produced media are vital tools for people who are living through a crisis.

Amplifying Voices is supporting CDC (Uganda) to train more community volunteers, especially women, and to provide additional speakerboxes where they are most needed. You can connect with the Soot Semee project on Facebook and support the project here.

*Name changed to protect privacy