Juharabad - Amplifying Voices

Juharabad youth are ready for emergencies

Johnny Fisher and Hazeen Latif — Sat, 21 Aug 2021 00:00:27 +0000

The New Hope team in Juharabad held a first aid training event for young people in their community this week. Representatives from the government’s 1122 Rescue team gave the training. There were around 35 participants at the event.

This is an unusual opportunity for young people in this community and will provide a valuable skill that could save lives in the neighbourhoods where they live and will also be valued by potential employers. A member of the Juharabad community, who is part of the 1122 Rescue team, worked with the New Hope team and Amplifying Voices Pakistan to make the opportunity possible.

The neighbourhood has been neglected by authorities. Streets are dirty and there are no healthcare facilities nearby. There are a lot of stray dogs, and also risk of snakebites. People who are struggling to cope face further risk from mis-using drugs or home-made alcohol. If there is a medical emergency, then people need to know how to respond both effectively and hygienically

You probably didn’t cover snakebites if you did first aid training in a UK workplace or village hall!

The New Hope team covered the event for their weekly WhatsApp podcasts with interviews and reports, including videos of participants doing first aid exercises. But first aid is only part of the solution. The media programmes are also raising awareness of how to prevent injury in the first place, including highlighting the risk of poisoning from unregulated home-made alcohol. Community-centred media gets people talking and working together for a cleaner neighbourhood to reduce risk of infections if people do get injured, and advocates to those in authority for locally accessible healthcare facilities.

New Hope team interview first aid trainer

This is another example of on-air off-air collaboration, in which media teams work alongside non-media activities to increase the impact of service providers, and celebrate the positive community stories.

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New hope builds as studio takes shape

Johnny Fisher and Hazeen Latif — Tue, 18 May 2021 12:00:38 +0000

Amplifying Voices Pakistan is supporting a church youth group in Punjab to develop a community-centred media project called New Hope. Following training at the end of last year and early this year, the youth group have been making regular podcasts that they distribute over WhatsApp, addressing local social issues. Hazeen Latif told us how pleased he is with young people’s work – “the podcasts are near to broadcast quality!”

So far audio production has been done using a voice recorder and a PC. With lots of effort by the local team and some support from Amplifying Voices Pakistan, a pile of insulating wool and sheets of plasterboard are taking shape as an audio room.

https://amplifyingvoices.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Studiobuild.mp4

Meanwhile our partner has managed to work through contacts in the radio industry to get a great deal on equipment for a small scale recording studio.

The New Hope team belong to a minority community in a poor neighbourhood in Punjab. But they refuse to let their minority status control their identity or their destiny. Their enthusiasm and capacity is reflected in their audio recordings. Their determination is clear in the efforts to build and equip a studio. We are excited to see how this project will develop as they keep building local partnerships and keep producing new community-centred material.

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World changers in a small town

Johnny Fisher and Hazeen Latif — Sat, 20 Jun 2020 13:14:53 +0000

In a world suffering from too many strong people using their strength to enforce their will on others, its really exciting to find this Pakistani youth group who are using their strengths to listen to their community. These young people from a church in the small city of Jauharabad said they had felt despair about the social problems in their community. Despite these feelings, they showed incredible belief in the possibilities for change and invited Hazeen Latif from HCR Pakistan to come and show them how to do community-centred media.

Before starting on any media production, Hazeen took them through a process of listening to each other to understand why they thought their community was struggling. Hazeen showed them how to use a ‘Problem Tree’ tool to analyse the issues they raised. This broke down the seemingly insurmountable problems into root causes. The group realised that they could address some of these root causes themselves. “The Problem Tree was a real inspiration. We felt we had a way to address issues in our community”. They were so excited about the possibilities that they insisted on working late into the evening, that day and the next!

The next day they learned how to make Community Service Announcements (CSAs) – a simple but powerful tool to stimulate community conversations. They also learned how to make radio interviews. They interviewed one of the participants who has been recovering from drug addiction. As he shared his story the group understood the power of community voices to inspire others in the community and show that change is possible.

https://amplifyingvoices.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Jauharabad-CSA-Girls-Education.mp3

Before the workshop, this church youth group had talked about their sense of marginalisation as less well educated young people in a minority group. But by the end of the two days they spoke instead about being a trigger for widespread community transformation. The audio content they create will be distributed via Facebook and shared Speakerboxes. The youth group also has aspirations to work with a local FM station.

Men complete community mapping exercise, Jauharabad, 2020

Communities facing disadvantage often find it difficult to contribute to the costs of community development workshops. This creates a difficult dilemma – we want to respond to community invitations to equip people, but we want to do so without propagating an NGO dependency culture. However, from the beginning, this youth group had determined to be hosts for the workshop, providing food, accommodation and training materials all from their own resources.

The participants said “We need more trainings”.

I heard the story and thought, “The world needs more people like this youth group!”

Many struggling communities are full of people with such positive attitudes and willingness to serve their communities. It is our joy to find them and help them use community-centred media to do just that.

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