Bright Home principles developed partly in response to lessons learned a few years ago in a different project where change started to happen too quickly. At that time, we had supported a youth group to make radio programmes about local social issues and injustices. At first, we were excited to hear how young people’s confidence and hope grew. Things could – and should – be different. However, some powerful people felt threatened and pressurised the project leader to stop. The fierce backlash forced the team to bring the project to an abrupt halt. They returned the equipment to us, and we were unable to continue any further activities in that community. Marginalised voices had become too loud, too fast.

A Bright Home approach

Hazeen Latif, CEO of Amplifying Voices Pakistan, told me that Bright Home projects take a different approach. Rather than starting with a media project, local partners provide sewing classes for young women and free medical camps focussing on women and children. These address some very pressing needs in a culturally acceptable way, developing traditional skills to earn income, and bringing healthcare to women and children who are rarely able to travel to a city for advice or treatment.

However, Bright Home classes are also places of conversation. Hazeen told me how, through conversation, aspirations are emerging and possibilities for change are growing. In one Punjabi community, conversations in the sewing classes about food shortages and lack of shade in summer led to a kitchen garden initiative and a tree planting campaign.

“Like my own daughter”

Some of these activities also improved community cohesion between minority Christian groups and people from the majority religion. The Bright Home team extended health camps and healthcare home visits beyond their own Christian community to work with women and children in majority religion homes. People from the majority religion responded, with one of their leaders donating money to buy medicines for the health camps. One older woman said of the Bright Home healthworker, “she is just like my own daughter”.

Home visits -supporting families across the community

The tree planting campaign gave men opportunity to get involved. Men from both communities came together to plant trees in public spaces and in each other’s home compounds. Both religions value good stewardship of creation, and in particular, they see tree planting as a virtuous activity.

Coming together to plant trees, Punjab, 2024

“No one will harm you”

The sense of togetherness became very real after an incident in the regional city, Sargodha. Someone there had used religion as an excuse to provoke a mob attack on a Christian business. But in the village, leaders from the majority community came to the Bright Home team and said, “No one will harm you when we are sitting here”.

Instead of feeling threatened by the changes brought by Bright Home, people with power, whether through gender or through religion, have felt included and found themselves contributors to change.

“I am Light”

In KPK province, some of the young women attending a Bright Home class spoke up and said they wanted to learn to read, write and do arithmetic. In that community, many girls had not been allowed to go to school. However, the literacy and numeracy classes that are now underway are not perceived as a threat, because these skills are necessary for using sewing patterns, and for developing businesses to make money from the sewing skills. The girls called the literacy classes, “Zama Rana” (I am light).

Working with sewing patterns, Nowshera

In each of the Bright Home groups, they use speakerboxes for listening to health advice programmes made in other Amplifying Voices projects. And in each place, some of the young women would ask to learn how to make speakerbox programmes themselves – “If they can do it, we can do it” – They start by discussing topics that are raised in the class setting. The programmes are played within the class to start with, but as confidence, skills, and local acceptance of the Bright Home activities have grown, some groups are now airing their programmes on local FM stations.

Some people may still oppose changes, especially those that offer opportunity and influence to young women in very conservative communities. However, there are now more who support the changes, who even help to make change happen. Bright Home communities are able to amplify local voices, because they do so with care.

The post Amplifying with care appeared first on Amplifying Voices.

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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Milden and Catherine Choongo

We’d love to introduce you to Milden Choongo and his wife Catherine, the founders of Chibozu Community Trust. Together they passionately support community development work in Simooya and the surrounding villages. Milden grew up in Simooya. He went on to graduate in automotive engineering and eventually started up his own transport consultancy business in Zambia. During this time, Milden and Catherine also started the Chibozu Community Trust as a way to give back to their home communities. Milden named the trust after his late mother. Over the years, Chibozu Community Trust has supported the Simooya community to build a health clinic and a highly respected community school which has over 500 pupils.

Milden Choongo commissioning water supply at the community school, Simooya

Since moving to the UK with their 4 children in 2006, Milden and Catherine have continued to serve Simooya communities. They set up a UK office for Chibozu Community Trust and registered as a UK charity. Milden and Catherine keep close connections with Simooya, visiting twice a year where possible.

Catherine Choongo, commissioning drinking water supply, Simooya rural clinic.

Ongoing developments in Simooya

In recent years Chibozu Community Trust has has helped to bring reliable electricity and a mobile phone tower to the area. The school and clinic have clean water supplies thanks to new boreholes facilitated by Chibozu. The community is currently building a maternity wing to Simooya Rural Health Centre. Catherine holds a degree in General Nursing and Midwifery and has championed the maternity ward development. Her vision is for women in and around Simooya to be able to deliver their babies with dignity, avoiding maternity infections and preventing deaths in childbirth.

The new facilities in Simooya came about through community participation in all the decisions and activities, so that the developments truly reflected the hopes and concerns of local people. The school and the clinic are staffed by the government, but the community owns the facilities.

Despite this level of local participation, community leaders and the board of Chibozu realised that some people could still miss out on the opportunities offered by the developments. Some because they are not aware of what was available to them or their families. Others miss out because they don’t know how, why, or when they should make use of facilities like the health clinic. Some are too old to go to school, but would love to have learning opportunities. This could, for example, lead to more productive, more sustainable farming practices.

Simooya Rural Clinic

The board of Chibozu feel the time is now ripe for a community radio station. They want to ensure the benefits of development reach more people. They also want to bring people together in community conversations and to expand learning opportunities across the 12 villages around Simooya.

Radio in Southern Zambia

The nearest large towns to Simooya are Choma and Pemba. Simooya is in Pemba district and neighbours Choma district to the south. Choma is the provincial capital for Southern Zambia. Both Choma and Pemba are on the main road between Zambia’s capital, Lusaka and the tourist city of Livingstone, next to the Victoria Falls on the southern border. Although this road makes Simooya area quite accessible, the villages are still remote. The distance from Choma and Pemba means that the only radio service available is the national station broadcasting from Lusaka.

Amplifying Voices has been asked to support Chibozu Community Trust with the purchase of equipment and by visiting Simooya to provide community-centred media workshops. The workshops will train community volunteers and workers from local service providers. They will learn to make media content together and to operate a community FM station. Starting small and building up as people gain experience, the radio station would provide a mix of information, advice, entertainment, advocacy and learning together through community conversations. Initial goals are likely to include supporting the work of the new maternity unit and encouraging healthy conversations around the topic of HIV and AIDS. Programmes will also seek to improve livelihoods and food security among local farmers.

Milden also told us that many community stories are being lost. They have not been passed on to younger generations. He believes radio would help keep these community memories alive and contribute to a flourishing future.

What next?

There is a lot to do before the station can become operational. Chibozu needs to get a broadcasting license. We need to agree on and purchase equipment for the station. There will be more Ting-listening – community consultations to confirm what the community want to tackle in the radio programmes, and to identify the people with something to say. Of course the equipment then needs to be installed in a secure, sustainable and accessible location. We look forward to an intense period of working together with Milden, Catherine and the Chibozu Community Trust, and to seeing the Simooya community flourish.

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Due to the sensitivity of this issue, faces are blurred to protect identities of local workers

Brickmaker factory owners in South Asia are notorious for their mistreatment of workers. Despite official legal protection, many families are trapped through oppressive bonded labour arrangements. Amplifying Voices Pakistan and their new local partner, Community Media Power, visited brickmaking communities near Nowshera, Pakistan this month. They were speaking to local brick workers when an ’overseer’ from one of the plants came by and tried to intimidate the team to stop them recording interviews. The workers were being very careful about the level of detail they gave, but they were willing to speak and talk about their situations, so the team continued with the interviews.

Interviewing Bacha Khan

However, one of the brickmaking plant owners, known locally as Bacha Khan (or respected elder), has a different approach. He listened as the workers shared their situations. Rather than deny the issues, he acknowledged that brick workers and their families are poor and with poverty combined with the physical isolation of the brick plants, brick workers and their families often can’t access health or education services. He is keen to see this changed. He sees the potential in brickmaker voices being heard over the radio programmes. Potential to highlight the issues brickmakers face, to build local confidence to address some of these issues themselves, and also to encourage more services to come into these isolated communities.

Having grown up as a child in a poor family, Bacha Khan knows the brickmakers’ experience first hand. But now he is a “Jirga” leader and an important figure, he welcomed the media team into his “Hujra” and even offered them his protection has they travel in the area (both important and binding ways of showing hospitality in the Pakhtun culture).

It is currently Dengue season in the Nowshera region, and when brickmakers or their family members get sick, they cannot meet their quotas and lose income. Community Media Power decided to make a programme about preventing Dengue Fever. In preparation, they went to the nearest government hospital (which is still quite a distance for people to reach on foot). They interviewed the medical superintendent who had already heard rumours about the new media project. He said he was delighted to hear that Community Media Power was working in the brickmaking areas and amplifying community voices. He hoped this would also give him support to advocate for better medical and education service provision for the brickmaker communities.

Interviewing a dengue patient, Nowshera

It is really encouraging to hear powerful stakeholders like Bacha Khan and the Medical Superintendent going against the norm raising their own voices in support of these communities and by encouraging community voices to speak out and make a difference.

Amplifying Voices Pakistan is working with Community Media Power in two communities near Nowshera. They have trained teams in each village to make short community-centred radio programmes to be aired on a local FM station. Currently the programmes are distributed as podcasts via WhatsApp to build community interest and involvement, and to help the production teams build their new production skills.

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In the UK, 65% of the population are already fully vaccinated. Even so, people are recognising that Covid19 is not going away soon. For many of us, learning to live with Covid means thinking about vaccine boosters, finding ways to mix with others, and carefully reopening for business. In Sierra Leone, where the effects of Ebola are still being felt six years on and the fragile health system is still recovering, it is also clear that Covid will not go away quickly. However, only 0.5% of the population have been fully vaccinated against Covid and a further 1.7% have been partially vaccinated. In order to try and manage Covid, people are constantly adapting to changing rules for living, working and socialising with others. Any thoughts of booster vaccines are a long way off. Learning to live with Covid is a big challenge.

We are working with BBN in Freetown to re-invigorate the volunteer team who had been doing SALT^[1] visits in 9 communities that are facing severe social challenges and deprivation with limited state provision. The SALT visits were interrupted as lockdowns restricted the ability to visit homes or facilitate community meetings. Community and team members are keen to see these visits restarted. The team also plan to extend the visits to another large deprived urban community in Freetown. BBN is preparing to re-focus radio content. They continue to support community efforts to stay healthy, build up local services and to sustain livelihoods, while also encouraging improved take-up of the Covid-19 vaccine as it becomes more available.

So far, Sierra Leone has imported enough vaccine doses to vaccinate 10% of the population (over 800k doses, and more have been promised through the COVAX system). Ransford Wright, CEO of BBN, told us that some of the reasons why more people have not been vaccinated are based on fear or lack of reliable information.  In July 2021, a survey by SierraPoll found that:

• 38% of the Freetown population have said that they will never take a vaccine, 38% say they are willing and 24% are unsure.
• Because:
  • People do not have time or don’t know where to get it (33%)
  • People are afraid of the side effects and that some people will die after vaccination (23%)
  • People think there is no point taking the vaccine – they will just follow precautions (10%)
  • People believe COVID is a hoax or not a serious threat (9%).

This has been further exacerbated by a very prominent pastor dying recently after having taken the vaccine.

We are supporting BBN to create and broadcast radio dramas, radio announcements and social media videos to help challenge the rumours and fears surrounding vaccines. SALT visits both inform and increase the reach of the radio content.

[1] SALT is a community engagement process that sees change happening in neighbourhoods and service providers through listening to household stories that unlock local strengths and connect local aspirations. Read more about Amplifying Voices through SALT.

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This presents a challenge … how could we honour our commitment to listening to community members, to hearing the stories, concerns and aspirations that will guide the project? We are delighted to be working with Hope for Relief and CDN who held a community consultation with members of Kawale community, on the outskirts of Chitipa at the end of July. Thoko from CDN and Richard from Hope for Relief worked closely with us to understand the questions we had for the community.

Some things that we learned …

• Around a third of the meeting participants use WhatsApp to communicate. These were mainly younger people, professionals, leaders and business people.
• People feel that the lack of a community radio station is hindering community development as it slows down communication.
• They like the idea of using speakerboxes to share community media … several people in the community already use speakerboxes for playing music.
• Another way of communicating in Kawale is through the chief’s messengers who go about in the village spreading information. They use a drum to get people’s attention. When people hear a drum they know that there is a special message from the chief about to come.

We used WhatsApp video calls alongside some pre-recorded training videos to introduce the community-centred media approach to five community volunteers and three project workers who met in the CDN office. The workshop participants sent us photos of flipcharts with their responses to discussion exercises. The participants spoke Lambya (the local language of Chitipa) during the discussions. This made it a very strange experience as a trainer – not being able to participate fully, and only seeing some sections of the discussion, it was a good exercise in placing our trust in the local partner to facilitate the learning process.

Thoko facilitates workshop in Chitipa, Aug 2021

But why the rush, why hold a remote community workshop not just wait until next year and go and visit?

Malawi, similarly to surrounding African countries, has just passed through the peak of a third wave of Covid-19 infections, which is of particular concern because of the impact and potential for further spread in rural areas coupled with the slow progress in vaccinations.

Malawi has so far received only a small about amount of vaccine (700k doses, for an adult population of 11 million). We also learned that people are reluctant to get the vaccine because of rumours such as:

• Coivd-19 is not for Malawians but for Chinese or white people.
• If someone accesses the vaccine he or she will become infertile.
• If someone gets vaccinated, he or she will be infected by the HIV virus.
• The vaccine is there to reduce the population of the people.
• If someone gets vaccinated he or she will reduce his lifespan.

The Kawale Community Voices project will initially focus on addressing the concerns or fears that drive these Covid rumours, by encouraging community dialogue about Covid vaccines based on access to reliable information sources.

Based on our experience in India and Uganda, we know that creating podcasts and distributing speakerboxes is a rapidly deployable and reliable way to get people talking, listening and taking action to reduce the impact of Covid-19. Speakerboxes are available in local markets, and podcasts can be created using voice recorder and a laptop.

However, we also recognise that radio is the community’s preferred media source. In the medium term, once we are able to visit the community in person, we hope to support Kawale’s residents and service providers to develop a community-centred radio station.

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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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Sam from Seva provides training to project volunteer.

In Dhule district, Seva had trained a team from another partner organisation (much the way that Amplifying Voices has provided training and support to Seva) to support local community-led development using regular podcasts played over speakerboxes.

In a very encouraging report from community volunteers in the villages in Dhule district we heard the following comments:

“Earlier, the women of the village had not been vaccinated against Covid-19. After listening to the doctor’s interview in the audio program, 28 women from the village got vaccinated.”

 “We didn’t know the importance of wearing masks, so we never wore one. But repeatedly listening to programmes on importance of masks we have started wearing masks and we can see other people wearing masks.”

An important feature of the speakerbox programmes is that they form part of ongoing conversations about a wide range of community concerns, rather than trying to push through changes in a single message. Having the programmes available locally also means that people can listen to podcasts over and over and discuss the content with each other.

For example:

“Woman started sending their daughters to school as they listened to the program about the importance of girl education. Initially they were hesitant due to long distance to school, but now there is a change.”

Conversations on the speakerbox programmes are effective because they address concerns that the villagers talk to the teams about, and regularly tell stories from the villages. Interviews with experts such as doctors are effective because the questions are questions that community members want to ask, and the interviewers encourage doctors to speak in terms that normal people can understand and respond to.

In a world where vaccination programmes are hampered by resistance and distrust, we are delighted that these Adivasi communities are choosing to resist the virus and that local voices are promoting vaccine readiness.

Project worker interviews an Adivasi woman

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