Stories that move mountains
Community-centred media helps people facing disadvantage or injustice to speak out and be heard by those in positions of power. Local stories are powerful, as HCR Pakistan’s partner, New Dawn, saw recently when responding to a scam that was hurting low income families.
A few years ago in Pakistan, the government started to roll out a scheme to provide healthcare assistance for people with very low incomes. Participants were to register for a ‘Sehat’ card, which could provide them with up to £1500 of healthcare insurance cover. The government gave clear criteria for providing the support to people. But because the intended recipients were poorly educated, many did not understand the criteria or how the scheme would work. Some applied but could not show how they met the criteria and their applications were rejected.
Some people took advantage of this limited awareness of the Sehat scheme. They asked villagers to give over a payment, saying they could guarantee that the villagers would be accepted on the scheme and receive a Sehat card. People gave money to the scammers who did nothing with it. As a result many low income families lost money, did not receive the promised cards, and were also not able to receive government assistance.
When speaking with community members, the New Dawn volunteers heard from several community members who had lost money to this scam. New Dawn aired interviews from the people affected as audio posts on the Zamung Radio What’sApp group which now has over 850 members. The people who organised the scam also heard the shows. They contacted New Dawn via WhatsApp and New Dawn facilitated a community-led resolution. They arranged a handover event for the scammers to give the misappropriated funds back to the affected community members. This was a partial payment and rest of the payment will be made soon. In return the community agreed not to take the issue any further.
When I asked how this could work, HCR Pakistan’s Hazeen Latif said. “The New Dawn team has a strong local Jirga influence. Once someone makes a promise to the Jirga, they are bound to keep that oath. This arrangement was agreed in Jirga and therefore held Jirga authority” (Jirga is a Pashtun tradition, whereby an assembly of leaders meet to resolve local disputes).
In many contexts where HCR partners work, advocacy can be a sensitive issue. People in power can react violently to criticism. Community-centred media often uses story-telling as an advocacy tool. Personal stories can be powerful without necessarily being directly confrontational. Those with power get to hear the real impact of policies or injustices. In many cases, on hearing these stories, people in power realise that an early positive response can ward off a more damaging exposure of their activities. In these cases, satsifactory community-led resolutions can be implemented, as happened in this case in Pakistan