Simooya Community Radio, Pemba District

Amplifying Voices partnered with the Chibozu Community Trust, an NGO registered in Zambia and the UK, to set up Simooya Community Radio station which went into its testing phase in April 2024.  The station provides education for children and adults, culturally relevant entertainment and dialogue, covering the Pemba district of Southern Zambia and serves a rural population of 81,000 people.

Chibozu Community Trust has employed a station manager and recruited a team of enthusiastic volunteers from Simooya village.  The radio team is responsible for engaging community members and local service providers to create content and develop the station as a locally sustainable non-profit community resource.

Context

Simooya Village is rurally located in the Southern Province of Zambia, where high levels of poverty create significant health risks. The nearest town to Simooya is Choma, on the main road from the capital Lusaka. Choma is quite accessible. Simooya and its 12 surrounding villages are not. The majority of people in these villages are subsistence farmers. Due to drought, and increased food prices, families spend around 65% of income on basic food needs.

However, Simooya community members want to change the outsiders' perception that they are too poor to help themselves. Their new radio station aims to equip villagers' own development initiatives, working towards “fullness of life” instead of poverty.

Our Role

Amplifying Voices

• provided studio equipment and support to repurpose unused premises into studios
• facilitated a community consultation and media training workshop
• and is providing ongoing project accompaniment

... to build the station’s long term sustainability by working with staff, board and volunteers to develop their skills in local media production, ongoing community engagement, station management (building partnerships), and volunteer training.

Due to ongoing electricity shortages we are also seeking funding so Simooya Community Radio can install solar equipment to keep the station running during powercuts. The solar will also power the village borehole and the school classrooms.

Station Goals:

• Voices of Simooya (and surrounds) will be amplified.
• People will develop through ...
  • Learning new skills
  • Learning about agriculture
  • Improved productivity and livelihoods

• More specifically ...
  • Easy access to news and information (eg announcements, local news)
  • School can reach parents more easily - announcements.
  • Business will be boosted (advertisements)
  • Education for young people
  • Opportunities for young people (eg volunteering)
  • Inform authorities about disasters.
  • Support the work of local churches.
  • Entertainment
  • Improve people’s health by sharing health advice and announcements.

Key Radio Station Policies

• Information/ News values -
  • Be objective – consider all sides
  • Be neutral/ impartial – no bias to one side
  • Be accurate – verify sources
  • Promote peace – don’t stir up hate/ or violent conflict
• Politics     - Equal representation to different parties – no favouritism
• Music         – 60% local, 40% non-local, including international music
• Culture     – Promote progressive local culture -Challenge harmful cultural practice
• Language     – mainly in Tonga and some English (other Zambian languages to be included if requested by speaker or audience)
• Religion     – All local churches will be included, and will be given slots throughout the week
• Inclusion    – actively seek out and partner with minority service providers, e.g. organisations working with blind or deaf people

Recent updates from Zambia

Going on air in a drought

We are pleased to announce that Simooya Community Radio is now on air on 94.3 FM. The new ...

Transforming life in the village

"Radio will help me with my missing animals," a local headman told Johnny when he visited the village ...

A new community radio station for Southern Zambia

There are only a few areas of Southern Zambia that don't have their own radio station. Pemba district ...

The post Simooya Community Radio appeared first on Amplifying Voices.

In partnership with the Amani Centre and FEBC Australia, a major opportunity has arisen to establish an “ICT” hub that we believe will bring dramatic changes for the region’s population, which has often felt disadvantaged and neglected. ICT stands for information communication technology, and initiatives like the one we are planning, have been widely documented as being crucial to reducing poverty, improving access to health and education services and creating new sources of income and employment.

Chairman of the Amani Centre, John Otunga, believes this community-led initiative will be a game changer for Tana River’s communities: “The ICT hub is so significant at this time as it will bridge the digital divide that has for years left the marginalised communities in Tana River and especially women and girls excluded from present-day opportunities.”

Central to the ICT hub will be Vox Radio (formerly Amani FM) which Amplifying Voices helped set up in 2017 and which has become a trusted friend to the communities that it it serves*.  It will continue to reach these communities and many more, however it will relocate 6km away to the town of Minjilla, a town that is fast becoming a nerve centre in East Africa’s largest infrastructure project, the LAPSSET trade corridor between Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan.

John says that most young people in Tana River are either unemployed or underemployed despite the government’s best efforts to create online jobs, but he believes this ICT hub, the first and only centre in Tana River,  will empower young people with employable skills in the digital space.  “It will build the capacity of the young minds to become creative, and access digital learning and digital jobs to empower them economically and have sustainable skills. The centre will offer mentorship while employing a collaborative learning approach that will spur development and inspire innovation that will hatch local solutions to local problems,” he says.

Working with other like-minded groups, we believe this ICT hub will greatly expand the transformative work of the local radio team, combining the power of the FM station with resources such as a digital learning centre, vocational training and a community library – alongside the vital misinformation warning project, Una Hakika.

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However with one in three children around the world lacking access to a quality basic education, low-cost, open source, digital learning solutions are making learning accessible to the most marginalised communities. We’re excited to be learning from and exploring with like-minded agencies like Elimu in Kenya, how community radio stations in Africa could also become hubs for distributing digital learning content to young learners.

Later this year, in collaboration with Elimu, our partner station, Amani FM in eastern Kenya hopes to become a pilot distribution hub for digital educational content to school rooms and homes across the district. Making use of the Amani FM tower, Elimu would be able to distribute lessons to pupils directly but without expensive internet costs and with increased security for these young students. Elimu is testing the Kolibri digital learning platform in schools in Eastern Kenya to enable students to access digital learning tools which do not require an internet connection. Content can be accessed by any Wifi-enabled device, including tablets provided by the government, or via a projector for group learning.

Complimented by education programmes on radio, an interactive digital environment could allow students to navigate learning at a pace and speed that is comfortable to them. It’s about putting learners and their learning needs at the heart of the education process.

Watch this space…

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 “The radio programmes, called “Elimika”, which means ‘educate yourself’, is now one of the most popular programmes on Amani FM,” says station manager Harriet Atyang.  “We cater for children up to 17 years of age with different types of programmes, giving students an opportunity to interact and share their learning,” she added.

The radio programmes will become increasingly important in the coming months with uncertainty over the academic year for 2020.  President Uhuru Kenyatta today instructed his Cabinet Secretary George Magoha, to notify Kenyas that primary and secondary schools will resume in January next year with a phased reopening of colleges and universities.

The initial plan was for schools to reopen in September, however Mr Magoha explained that the January reopening was due to medical advice because the spike of the infection was expected to occur in September.

 (Browse HCR Covid-19 resources and communications advice)

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Approximately 264 million children and adolescents around the world do not have the opportunity to enter or complete school. They dream of a life where they can have an education. Working in international development, we know education is a key factor in reducing the poverty cycle.

In Australia, we are extremely lucky to have public education for all children, which is why it might sound surprising that in some communities, there are children missing out on years of school or even their entire schooling. This has huge ramifications for their future abilities to live a fulfilling purposeful life.

In Carnarvon, a small town we work, school non-attendance is high, and with the support of community, government and supporting organisations changing attitudes and the culture of schooling and education is a key priority area.

There are many reasons why education is not a priority and after going on the school pick up bus you can see larger social issues which prevent children going to school exist. Run-down and insecure housing, family alcohol and other drug issues, lack of food security. Talking with locals, many of these social issues exist due to intergenerational trauma from past Government policies, including the Stolen Generation.

Children were taken from their families and to be brought up in institutions, fostered out or adopted by white families. Children lost their connection to family, culture, land and language. Not only does this contribute largely to current social issues within Aboriginal communities, but also has create a sense of distrust to ‘white’ education (AIATSIS).

However, with the support of the community, the school and the local Remote School Attendance Strategy team (who are part of Ngala Midwest & Gascoyne), there has been progress in supporting parents to get their children to school, and change the current perception. This takes a lot of dedicated people and a holistic approach to support families. Local leaders identify education is important for their community’s future, but are also passionate in passing down traditional culture.

For the past few years we have been working with the Carnarvon community and the Remote School Attendance Strategy team to develop local video and radio content to promote school and education. We have spoken with Elders, right through to kindy students about what education means to them. Recently we developed a set of videos which the Carnarvon community engaged with and we had great feedback. You can check one of them out here:

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