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Mirabai (not her real name) was admitted to hospital in the city on 19th September suffering with abdominal swelling and terrible pain in her body. Normally she wouldn’t go to hospital, but she had heard on the speakerbox in her village in India about symptoms of uterine cancer, which was prevalent among Adivasi communities, and that it was important to get treated as early as possible.  As an Adivasi woman, classified in India as a person from a “scheduled tribe“, the presenter on the speakerbox programme told her that her medical expenses would be covered under the MJPJAY programme.

When our colleagues from SEVA, who made the programme, went to visit her, shortly after her arrival, no beds were available and no doctor would treat her. Bewildered and in a strange city, far from friends and family, she was told that she first had to pay before she could receive treatment and be admitted into the hospital.  “But I have no money,” she told them, “I was told that treatment would be free.”

At the time of writing, 28 days after arriving in the city, Mirabai has been admitted to hospital only because the SEVA team advocated on her behalf and the only pain killers she has received has been from the SEVA team, who also paid for her to have a scan. Sadly it seems she does have cancer and it has already spread around her body, but still no treatment has been forthcoming.

“Please let me die at home.  It is better to have my family with me than to die as a stranger in a place I do not know.”

In a very frail and weakened state Mirabai told the team this morning, “Please let me die at home. It is better to have my family with me than to die as a stranger in a place I do not know.” While the SEVA team makes arrangements to help her get back to her village and ensure she has appropriate medication, the team leader frustratingly said: “This injustice seems to be common. By law she is entitled to healthcare under the Mahatma Jyotirao Phule Jan Arogya Yojana scheme, however the reality is that she did not have a voice to exercise her rights.”

Since the Adivasi Voices project began in 2018, a major thrust of the project has been to inform local communities of their rights under the law and the range of services that are available to them free of charge. They have had some success, such as when one village was able to access government support to get gas cookers to free them from the harmful effects of cooking over wood fires in their homes (See Sanghitha’s story).

“We realise that we’re just scratching the surface of this problem,” said team member Sam. “Awareness of your rights is not enough if you don’t have the power to exercise them,” he added.

It can often feel like there is nothing we can do in the face of injustice and inequality, however over the coming days, the SEVA team will be looking at how they can strengthen their advocacy role for Adivasi communities. They recognise there are three main ways they could help:

• Advocacy by the communities themselves:  Involving the communities in conversation and helping them see that when many people join together to call for change, powerful decision-makers can be influenced and difficult situations can change. This can be a very effective and sustainable way to do advocacy as it gives integrity and legitimacy to the activities and challenges of unjust power relations.
• Advocacy with the communities:  By bringing together communities affected by an unjust situation with other communities, groups and organisations who are not directly affected, collaborative action can effect change.
• Advocacy for the communities:  SEVA also recognises that it has a role to advocate on behalf of communities affected by an unjust situation, especially where they are unable to speak out because of fear or danger. They recognise this will involve strengthening relationships and trust with health service providers, informing them of the plight of tribal people and holding them to account when services are withheld or rights are ignored.

Mirabai’s story makes us want to scream against systems that perpetuate inequality, unfairness and injustice.  It has served as a reminder to our team at Amplifying Voices that we need to keep doing all we can, no matter how small, to work towards a time when all people, everywhere have an opportunity to live a life in peace and with dignity.  In the meantime our hearts go out to Mirabai and her family and community, and the many people like her who are victims of injustice.

The Adivasi Voices Project is a partnership initiative between the SEVA organisation and Amplifying Voices, using community-centred media approaches to bring positive change to resource-poor tribal communities that often feel neglected and marginalised.

Photo: An Adivasi listener group with speakerbox.

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Since June, Pakistan has been devastated by record monsoon rains causing the worst flooding in decades.  The provinces of Sindh and Balochistan have been worst hit, but communities where our partners work, in the northern province of Khyberpakhtunkhwa (KPK), have also been badly affected by the floods.

Amplifying Voices Pakistan has responded by supporting these communities near Charsadda and near Nowshera. Hazeen from Amplifying Voices Pakistan told me that private Youtubers and TikTokers did a good job of telling people where to find food and shelter. Amplifying Voices set out to reach people not reached through these channels, to raise the voices of people not reached by aid responders, and to provide access to health advice and basic medical treatment.

Nowshera

Zafar "gets his shoes dirty" getting out and about to hear community members' stories near Nowshera, Aug 2022.

Zafar, the founder of local partner, Community Media Power, is also Amplifying Voices Pakistan's representative in Nowshera for a new disaster response arm, AViD (Amplifying Voices in Disaster). As the flood warnings started, the local military commander invited Zafar to attend disaster management briefings. This turned out to be vital for accessing up-to-the-minute official information and advice on behalf of the listeners. Zafar also interviewed local government officials including the Additional Deputy Commissioner (see image at top of page) and the Deputy Commissioner. The interviews were recorded and aired on the local station, Zalmay Fm, and also filmed for sending out via Facebook videos. This helped people hear the official advice on evacuation and later, advice on returning to homes after the worst of the flood.

A key aim of the radio response is to help community members take an active role in their own response, so Zafar also visited places where people had taken refuge after fleeing their homes, or where they had missed out on relief, so they could share their stories on air. One place that Zafar visited had had 8ft of water in the houses and 10 days had gone by with no relief arriving. He interviewed community members and made short videos of their situation which he shared on social media platforms connected to local authorities. The next day authorities sent machinery to clean the streets and also provided clean drinking water, food and sprayed the area to prevent disease. One community member said:

"No one would dare to come to our place after seeing such dirt and mud but the AViD team came to us. We will never forget their courage and care for us"

AViD volunteers also provided food packages directly to another group that had missed out on emergency relief.

AViD volunteer distributing food packages, nr Nowshera, Aug 2022

Following the initial response, Zafar recorded a series of interviews amplifying the voices of local heroes, such as local firefighters, who had done so much to help their communities.

Radio broadcasts to celebrate the local heroes in the Pakistan flood response, Nowshera 2022

Charsadda

In Charsadda district, the compound where the Naway Saher studio is located was flooded. The team leader’s family who live there managed to save a lot of their belongings by moving them, as many families do, to a room on their rooftop before the floods hit. They also managed to save the studio equipment. They then had to evacuate. On returning to the house after the worst of the flood, they found they had a huge clean up job on their hands, but most of their belongings were safe.

The Naway Saher team leader, who is also a local health worker, created radio programmes alerting people to the health risks faced by people returning to flood-damaged homes. We asked him how the children had been affected by the floods. He told us that the children found it exciting, because it was like there was a swimming pool everywhere. But this was also a huge a health risk for the children.  Swimming or walking in flood water holds increased risk of snakebites. The water is very dirty and unhygienic, with lots of submerged hazards. Boreholes had been compromised so drinking water was polluted. Amplifying Voices Pakistan provided emergency funding so that Naway Saher was able to record discussions about these challenges with local people and air them on the local radio station, Dilbar FM.

Following the radio programmes Naway Saher and Amplifying Voices Pakistan provided a pop-up health camp with emergency supplies of basic medicines to help people who had become ill because of the flood waters. The Naway Saher team leader and his wife, the ladies health worker for the area, know the people in their community well and were able to prioritise medicines and advice going to those who needed it most.

Ladies health worker provides advice and medicine, nr Charsadda, 2022

Despite this, so many people came to get medicine that the supplies ran out within 2 days. The health worker had to move the dispensary from his usual clinic to a local school which had more space for people to queue up. Hazeen encouraged Naway Saher to issue an appeal to raise local support for the medicines. This would supplement the funding given by Amplifying Voices, and followed the principle of supporting local people to take a leading role in their own response.

Medical camp in the school

Officials expect the effects of the floods to continue into October and beyond. Teams from Nowshera and Charsadda will continue to provide special radio programmes on flood recovery, with a focus on health care. There will be at least one more health camp in each location to support the need for emergency medicines. An emergency response like this falls outside the budgets and plans for Amplifying Voices Pakistan, so we are grateful to our supporters who can give a little extra to support Hazeen and his team in this time. We are also grateful to FEBC Australia for their generous support of this response.

Amplifying Voices in Disaster (AViD)

This was the first deployment of an Amplifying Voices in Disaster (AViD) response. AViD, is a concept that Amplifying Voices UK and Amplifying Voices Pakistan been working on together in preparation for such an event. AViD builds on our previous experience supporting First Response Radio, using radio programmes and other media to provide timely 2-way communication channels for local communities affected by a disaster. AViD’s goal is for community voices to play a central role in humanitarian responses, so that communities recover quickly from disaster, growing in confidence, capacity, and resilience as they do so.

We feel that Amplifying Voices can be most effective in disaster response by working with existing community-centred media projects where trust already exists between our partners and community members. This provides a strong foundation for supporting the affected community by creating media programmes with community voices at the fore.

AViD also equips community groups to liaise with the influx of humanitarian service providers who come into disaster-affected communities often with quite specialised information and advice to communicate. To equip ourselves for the task and to build understanding with humanitarian service providers, we are members of the CDAC Network. The CDAC Network is a global alliance of media development organisations, UN agencies, the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, NGOs and specialist communications entities, all determined to enable and support dialogue with and between communities in preparation for, or response to disasters.

Donate to AViD Pakistan flood Response

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Sharing our  learning

Our article in Footsteps explores two of the less obvious advantages of community-centred media – advocacy (amplifying the voices of those who have been disadvantaged) – and encouraging better understanding of others by promoting community conversations. We also highlighted the relative simplicity of audio as a medium, allowing people with a variety of abilities to participate in creating content.

Advocacy is highlighted in the article by Hazeen’s story about people, who were tricked by thieves into paying for a free government service, having their money restored after the thieves heard their stories on the radio and realised they had been discovered.

Amani FM is rooted in community conversations. At its outset, the radio programmes shared personal stories from people who were in conflict with each other allowing the listeners to “walk a mile in their neighbours shoes”. This promoted dialogue and understanding – foundations for peace.

Each Footsteps issue includes a Resources article designed to inspire communities to try some ideas out for themselves. This month “How to make a community podcast” is based on our partners’ experiences in Uganda and India, using speakerboxes in areas where radio is not possible or appropriate.

Learning from others

It is really encouraging to be asked to share our own learning. It is also encouraging to see the  innovation of other organisations using various participatory approaches for effective communication. In this issue, my good friend Bobby Zachariah helps corporations become more effective in their social responsibility activities by getting better at listening, using an approach called SALT. You may have heard us talk about the SALT approach when we talk about the Amplify project in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

SALT volunteers listening to community stories. Freetown. BBN, 2019

In the spirit of listening well, Roland Lubett talks about the importance of understanding non-verbal communication – and we learn that non-verbal communication isn’t limited to body language.

The World Association of Christian Communication (WACC) talks about supporting women in Delhi to build skills in using mobile phones and other modern communication methods so that their voices are included in the decisions that affect them. From WACC we learn about taking a rights-based approach to communication.

Five Talents tell Ana’s story. Ana felt she didn’t have the right skills, but her personal qualities drew many unheard people into community conversations – and encouraged her own daughter to become a facilitator and communicator.

From Tearfund we learn about Community Theatre – reflecting the power of being immersed in a story. This article resonates with us because radio drama is a popular and effective tool in the places where we work. Our partners, BBN in Freetown, are currently using a radio drama series to address fears about getting the Covid vaccination.

Insightshare uses a similar approach to Amplifying Voices, but with video. Their article shares how participatory video enabled widows in communities in Ghana to move from whispering their issues among themselves to having the attention of chiefs and politicians.

An interview with a facilitator, who has learned sign language to be able to include deaf people in her workshops, reminds us to address hidden barriers to full participation in communication. As does a final article about the risks of the “smarts” behind social media which deliver a limited and tailored view of the world to our smartphones.

Such a breadth of participatory communication activities emphasises the value of collaboration – and helps us to avoid the pitfall of thinking our way is the only best way. But we are also very encouraged to be reminded that community-centred radio (and podcasts) play such an important role in completing this tapestry of participatory communication.

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If you’ve been following the Facebook page of Amplifying Voices Pakistan, you’ll have seen this story unfold over the last few weeks. But we feel it’s a story worth re-telling. It’s the story of a radio programme that dug a new borehole!

Since November last year a new partner organisation, Community Media Power, founded by Amplifying Voices Pakistan, has been making radio programmes based on conversations in two or three isolated communities outside Nowshera. In one of these programmes, community members talked about the efforts they have to go to to fetch water. A listener was moved by the story and decided to help the community do something about it.

The community lives in an informal settlement that was built about 40 years ago by people who had fled from their homes in Afghanistan. The current residents, numbering around 50-60 families, have still not been fully integrated into the wider community. However, at some point several years ago, someone did dig a couple of boreholes to provide clean water. The pipes lining the boreholes have since rusted and one of the pumps has lost its handle. With no fresh water available locally, community members had to cross a railway track and walk to another community to fetch water, where they were not always welcome and sometimes chased away.

Community Media Power created a radio programme with the community voices telling this story and a local FM station in Nowshera aired the programme. A woman, who was looking for a suitable way to give charitably in preparation for Ramadan, heard the story and decided to get in touch. She said that if the community could get the work started before Ramadan, she would pay for a new borehole and repairs to the other two.

The new borehole has been located near the mosque, with a solar powered pump, a 1000-gallon storage tank so that water is always available from the borehole via taps. This has an additional benefit of providing water for worshipers washing before prayers. The broken boreholes have had the metal lining removed and replaced with more durable plastic pipe lining, and the pump mechanism refurbished.

Community volunteers feed plastic lining into new borehole, Nowshera, March 2022

It only took a week to dig the new borehole, drilling down to 150ft to ensure a good supply of clean water. When the new borehole was ready, the community held a celebration event, to which the donor also came. She gave a radio interview via Community Media Power, encouraging others to do something similar, providing communities with means to develop themselves.

We know that a radio programme cannot actually dig a borehole, but we continue to be encouraged by the power of community-centred radio programmes to advocate for communities whilst also mobilising the community members to take action locally.

Installing borehole - Video courtesy of Community Media Power and Amplifying Voices

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Barnabas said:

“Mostly the songs are about displacement, power struggles in South Sudan, the struggles of our people… and also a little of hope!”

“Sambara is a wheel or sometimes a tyre, and you know, our kids they use it for playing. It’s a source of happiness for them. The Sambara album talks about an experience whereby your source of happiness is taken away from you”

“That’s why Sambara is talking about issues of social injustice. And I guess I have just started a journey to talk about issues that affects our people”

You can watch the whole interview with Barnabas on the video, watch to the end and see a sample of the album launch party!

Streaming options to hear music from Sambara

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Convinced that there was no alternative to cooking with firewood and cow dung, Sangeetha put up with her condition, as did her neighbours. That was until one evening, when on her speakerbox, she heard about a government programme called “Ujjwala Yojana” (Bright Scheme). This is a government programme designed to help disadvantaged communities get a grant for a gas cooker and cylinder, to help put an end to the devastating impact of smoke fires on their health. She learned through the speakerbox that it was important that tribal people understood that they had legal rights to protect communities like theirs, and it explained just how they could exercise those rights.

Just three weeks after petitioning the local government office, a man was sent to set up Sangeetha’s gas cooker. Proudly demonstrating it she said: “The speakerbox programme from Seva, taught me how to use my voice and exercise my rights, and this will clear the air.” Sangeetha’s story has now been shared in many other villages on new speakerbox programmes in which she urges other tribal people to take advantage of the scheme, so their health can improve as well. “Brothers and sisters,” she says, “So often our people are afraid and don’t know we can speak or are unaware that we have rights, but learn from my example about how you can change your own circumstances.”

Village chief Ramdas said Sangeetha’s story is just one of many stories that can be told since Seva began the speakerbox project in 2018. “If you came to our village two years ago, you would be amazed by the many changes that have taken place. We have toilets that work, water that’s clean and our children are attending school. We feel different and we feel like we have found our voice.”

The Adivasi Voices Project is a partnership initiative between the SEVA organisation and Amplifying Voices, using community-centred media approaches to bring positive change to resource-poor Adivasi communities that often feel neglected and marginalised.

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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

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By Dr Ross James, Founder, Health Communication Resources 

Background

The communities of Magindanaon province in Mindanao, Philippines, have experienced sustained conflict, disadvantage and disempowerment. Radio Gandingan (RG) has quietly transformed minority Maguindanaon communities, severely affected by decades of armed struggle for political autonomy involving multiple state, civil, political, religious and armed actors. RG began broadcasting in 2000 as a weekly one-hour radio program with airtime purchased from a local commercial radio station but expanded in 2004 to two and a half hours of purchased airtime, spread over five evenings each week. Following the storming of Marawi City in north Mindanao by ISIS-aligned fighters who attacked key government buildings, churches and schools, RG volunteers provided evacuees with field reports, updates and information provided by government and non-government (NGO) service providers. Local communities claimed RG was more trustworthy than other sources of information, because of RG’s demonstrated compassion and credibility through community-centered activities. 

We wanted to understand the processes that led to RG being regarded in this way. We analysed reliable research data collected in the period 2005 to 2009 using realist evaluation, or RE [2].  This method analyses how people within a context respond to mechanisms, such as components or resources, that bring about change. In other words understanding the context is very important, as are the mechanisms that can influence change.

The context of the six communities associated with RG was very complex.  Communities were isolated from health and development service providers and suffered from ill health due to poor hygiene.  There was high unemployment, a poor environment and tension between neighbours and within families.  Ordinary people were further excluded from decision-making, with little access to information resulting in low self-confidence and disempowerment.

What We Found

When we looked at the data we found stories and explanations of how RG’s role had promoted dialogue, and improved livelihood and community participation. Specifically, dialogue had resolved community conflict and strengthened family bonds and relationships, and improved communication and understanding between community leaders and community members; livelihood had improved with behaviours and practices that led to better protection of the environment, livelihood, health, community cohesion and unity; and community participation was better through involvement in the RG radio program, and increased participation and communication in community meetings. 

RG trained 18 Community Radio Volunteers (CRVs), residents in the six communities, to participate in community-centered radio programming. RG programs modelled dialogue that extended into community discourse, social learning and decision-making processes of married couples. Dramas prompted family communication about values such as honesty and tolerance. One man said ‘I’ve learned from the drama that wives have a great role in the family so I should appreciate their hard work’. RG programs resolved a conflict between duck owners and rice farmers (ducks ate the farmers’ rice), and inspired leaders to reconcile two families quarrelling over land. 

People said RG made them aware of harmful practices to environmental resources, such as cutting down trees, and using dynamite or poison for fishing. A project to install community toilets was organised in one community after they had used an RG program to identify cleanliness as a problem. One lady reported that her children began washing in the evening: “I didn’t ask them, it’s RG who taught them of this health practice”.   Another person spoke of better community relationships because of RG: “Our corn used to be stolen before we were able to harvest it. But now we do not fear because no one steals them anymore. The youths who used to give us problems stopped doing bad things”. 

Community members participated in radio programs on health, livelihood or community issues. Community leaders were given opportunities to discuss issues on air with community members and for the first time women, people living with disability and those with little education were included.  

Why is this A BIG DEAL?

Radio programming is a widely recognised communication strategy for health and social development internationally. Community radio provides advocacy, education and information in a diverse range of initiatives for public health and disease, democracy and politics, peacebuilding, empowerment of women, human rights and so on. 

However, and this is a big however, such approaches rely on the skills of professional media workers and service providers, as well as wide-scale, well-funded systematic community development interventions. Participatory communication along the lines of RG does not easily fit the mindset of big funders who shy away from politics or power-dynamics in communities.  And so they limit communication to the dissemination of messages and evaluate message-related factors such as audience reach, message comprehension and recall.

This study is evidence that a local level community-centred radio and their volunteers is powerful way facilitating dialogue, livelihood and participatory communication outcomes in contexts characterised by sustained conflict, disadvantage and disempowerment. 

If you would like to learn more about this project, about Realistic Evaluation (RE) practice or take part in a webinar on RE, then please contact us via our contact page.

[1] Original Article: R James, E Romo-Murphy, M Oczon-Quirante. A Realist Evaluation of a Community-Centered Radio Initiative for Health and Development in Mindanao, Philippines. Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health DOI: 10.1177/1010539519870661

[2] There is not enough space to fully explain RE in this blog. A good starting point is the classic text: Pawson R, Tilley N. Realistic Evaluation. London: SAGE Publications; 1997.

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 “We can’t sleep at night as the children cry of mosquito bites and heat,” says a local resident. Because of low electricity voltage and power cuts, electric fan speed is no better than a handheld fan. The problem was caused by a 25 kVA transformer with weak and rusted links, which connected the village to the national electricity supply grid. The transformer has been repaired over two dozen times and cannot be repaired anymore.

But thanks to our partner’s community radio program “Naway Saher”, which highlighted this issue before summer reached peak temperatures, a brand new 50kVA transformer has been installed replacing the older one. The voltage is very stable and community houses are much happier places to be. Residents say “this good fan speed is much better than hand fan!”

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