Opening doors in Sargodha

Transitioning from sewing classes to live radio may seem like an odd route for a project to take. ...

Amplifying with care

Through Bright Home groups, Amplifying Voices Pakistan promotes change at a pace that allows time for long-held cultural ...

From rage to peace

Taking part in a "Bright Home" group helped six sisters to overcome their rage at having “nothing to ...

See all project updates from Roshni ro Ghar

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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.

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Amplifying Voices is working with Zambian NGO, Chibozu Community Trust, to set up a community radio station in Simooya. The nearest town to Simooya, Choma, is on the main road from the capital Lusaka to the tourist centres at Victoria Falls. Choma is quite accessible. Simooya is not.

In earlier conversations about logistics and resources for the project, the term “but they’re in the village” seemed to suggest limitations. However, the implications were not clear to me, coming from a UK context where the term suggests an alternative lifestyle choice from urban living. In Zambia’s Southern Province, we soon recognised that “in the village” is a euphemism for isolation and lack. Life for people “in the village” is very different to life for people in towns like Choma. People in Choma have access to reasonable healthcare, toilets and running water in homes, but it’s often not so “in the village”.

Simooya is made up of several settlements each with its own headman. I went to visit some of the headmen and their households, to get a better understanding of what they hoped for in a radio station. I also wanted to introduce myself so that when I return to do installation and training, I’m not a total stranger. Three men and two women from the local charity came with me to translate, and probably also to vouch for me. Building trust is really important in community-centred media projects.

At each place we sat around until a few members of the household gathered. Some might exchange pleasantries, and then there was, what seemed to me, an awkward silence. When I tried to break it and get the conversation going, my companions cautioned me to wait, “it’s different here in the village from the town. We don’t just dive into things.” Then eventually there would be a lift of a chin in my direction and eyes glancing to one of my companions – it’s the cue for “so what’s he got to say then?”

After asking about who lived in the compound, how old were the children etc, I could ask about the radio station. What did the community members hope it would offer them? What kind of shows were they looking forward to listening to? And what if anything should the radio station not do – what mistakes should we avoid?

And so, we came to this man who told us that radio would help him get his missing animals back. These smallholdings don’t have any fences and cattle and goats roam freely, with some teenagers or children keeping an eye on them. The man said that whenever one of his animals goes missing, he has to go to Choma, (which is difficult for villagers to get to), to put out a notice via a commercial radio station (which is expensive and not very local). He is looking forward to having a local radio station to go to place his missing animal notices.

Other families were looking forward to sports updates, to educational programmes and to farmers being able to share ideas and advice with each other. One woman warned us that we should be careful that the radio station doesn’t become a source of misinformation.

People “in the village” don’t want the phrase “in the village” to always have the connotations of poverty that it has now. Our hope is that the radio station plays a significant role in villagers experiencing “fullness of life” instead.

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Rokhan-e-Kore class, KPK, 2023

Sewing classes have been running now for several weeks and young girls who attend have told us that they have learned a lot. They can see how they will use these skills to earn money from their families. Some of the participants said they would be interested in learning computer and media skills. But there are challenges.

It started with a challenge to one of our own norms! We have a training mantra which you may have heard us say before: “Get your shoes dirty”. It’s a shorthand way of saying people should build trust and be relevant by getting out of their office or studio into the community to engage with people on the streets and in the markets. The women attending the sewing classes had picked up on this aspect of community-centred media, perhaps during discussion about community-centred media in the broader community during the AViD response to the floods last summer. When discussing the possibility of including media training in Rokhan-e-Kore, the participants said they couldn’t be involved if it meant going out to record interviews etc in the streets and markets of their own village and neighbouring places.  They said it has been a big thing for many of these women and girls to get permission from their families to attend Rokhan-e-Kore in a classroom outside their homes. They don’t want to jeopardise that.

Hazeen explained that they would be able to do all media learning, recording and other production within the classroom. The class teacher is very willing to learn how to teach the media skills, so eventually Hazeen would not need to be the one teaching. He also explained that the purpose of the “get your shoes dirty” principle is to persuade media people and service providers (eg clinics, religious groups) to leave their comfort zones to come and listen to people in community locations, like the women in the sewing class. The voices of local women making and taking new opportunities are the voices that media should amplify.

Hazeen also recognised that it could be a bit scary to talk on a radio programme, which could go out via a local FM station, about these new opportunities and the participants’ roles in creating them. It’s scary because it the people who traditionally make decisions and create income might feel threatened by the programme content. He encouraged the women that they could use pseudonyms whenever they create content, and that the name of their village needn’t be mentioned. This does create a challenge for one of our other norms – that of building trust and rapport with community members through familiar voices. However, listeners don’t need to identify the women speaking to be able to identify with them. The women have familiar accents and their stories or challenges are similar to what the listeners’ face.

Within minutes of Hazeen providing these reassurances, the participants asked him,

“will we able to talk about the womens’ issues that no-one ever talks about?”.

With an emphatic yes, Hazeen was delighted to say that this is one of the main reasons why we offer media training and ongoing support to create programmes. It’s what community-centred media should be all about.

Paraphrasing something I heard from Fred Bahnson, the frontlines of change are best led by those most disadvantaged by the status quo. In Rokhan-e-Kore contexts, we are equipping those disadvantaged by the status quo to take their first steps as agents of change by helping them to feel sufficiently safe to do so.

The arrival of some solar panels gave another indication that these culturally sensitive steps are bearing fruit. Hazeen and his local partner leave most of the engagement with class participants to a local woman so that there are only few occasions when a man is present and so the women can continue to observe “purdah” (or seclusion from men). Because the classes are in a public place outside their homes, and because a man may occasionally be present, the women do wear veils in the classroom. At this time of year, it gets very hot, and wearing a veil makes the heat even harder to bear. However, a local man has agreed to donate solar panels if Hazeen can provide pedestal fans. This reflects that some local men value the Bright Home activities and want to do something to support.

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Peacebuilding near Lainya, South Sudan

Following the Amplifying Voices training workshops in Yei earlier this year, CDC South Sudan held community consultations with 5 communities or Payams in the Lainya area. This area is between the towns of Yei and Lainya in Central Equatoria State. During the consultation events, CDC supported the community members to make some audio content.  Participants were excited by the event and said,

“We didn’t know how radio was made. It was just there on radios. Now we are making it ourselves.”

As a result of the consultation, 170 listening groups will each be equipped with a speaker box. The project is called Studio Salaam (or Peace Studio).

People in Lainya area told CDC that there is a big gap between the local people and the army responsible for maintaining order in the area. To address this, around half of the listener groups will be in the communities, made up of community members. The other listener groups will be embedded in the local structures, for example, there will be police listener groups, army listener groups and local government listener groups.

Listener groups also make media content, creating recordings as part of their meetings. CDC envisages that the community groups can share their experiences of government agencies, for example how they see soldiers coming in and destroying crops or other local resources. Community members will share how they want to be treated. CDC expect army and police groups to explore how they should play their roles. For example, police will be able to talk about things in communities that lead them to behave as they do – the things that they see as not right.

The speakerboxes are seen as a safe place to have these difficult conversations. To ease concerns about safety, these South Sudan speakerbox podcasts will not broadcast the names of people speaking.

Peacebuilding in Rhino Camp, Uganda

Meanwhile in Uganda, in Omugo 4 village of Rhino Camp refugee settlement, the Soot Semee project continues and is maturing. Soot Semee volunteers are learning to optimise and adapt as the project progresses from a pilot phase to an established community-owned media platform. For example, at the start, the Soot Semee podcasts were played on a loop on large speakers in the marketplace. Some people found this annoying and so now the large speakers will play Soot Semee at set times, and people will gather to listen.

In 2016 when the most recent large scale migration started there was rapid growth of Rhino Camp and Omugo Zone. They were considered as humanitarian emergencies and large numbers of international organisations came to the displacement camps to support the refugees. Now many of these organisations have moved on. But there are still large numbers of people who have resettled in Omugo Zone and other parts of Rhino Camp, who are still facing similar challenges to those faced by people in 2016.  Groups like Soot Semee, which are set up by refugees themselves, are taking long term approaches to their work. The project does not end. New volunteers need to go through training. Items that break need repaired or replaced, rather than signalling an end to the project.

Hearing from community members at SD Card collection point, Omuga Zone, Aug 2022

The Soot Semee council of reference meets regularly to review Soot Semee content and provide feedback to help the project evolve in a way that best serves the need. Because of this, fresh new content is being produced weekly, and people continue to gather in listening groups to listen, discuss, and respond with recordings of their own. People use these opportunities to share stories of what works for them and could work for others. For example, listeners heard several people explain that they return to South Sudan to farm for a while, but it is not safe to stay there long term so they return to the camp. Stories like these help Omugo 4 residents to make their own decisions on how to earn their livelihoods, or how they can best support their families.

Livelihood stories on Soot Semee are also connected to a ‘microgrant’ programme that CDC Uganda is running. Some people talked about using microgrants to set up businesses making and selling soap. Buying in a piece of soap from outside the camp currently costs about one quarter of one refugee’s monthly income. With soap so vital in the fight against Covid and other transferable diseases, there is clearly a need for a more affordable supply.

Another regular role for podcasts is in providing feedback from meetings at “Base Camp”. Base camp is the part of Omugo Zone where the representative of the Office of Prime Minister works. UNHCR and other camp coordination bodies have their offices there. Base Camp is also a long way from Omugo 4 village. There are many different meetings at Base Camp. There are different people who attend and are responsible for reporting back to the Omugo 4 village. However, residents found that information was often lost in this relaying process. Some people would favour their own families over others when passing on information, creating potential for conflict. So one of the volunteers, Joseph Idoru Lo Baba, now records the information at camp meetings which is then given out through the Soot Semee podcasts.

Soot Semee also helped to prevent violence during a recent UNHCR verification process. Refugees need to verify their registration every few years to ensure they have the right documentation to be supported and protected as refugees. Soot Semee informed community members about the need to re-register and advised them how, when and where they could complete the process. In other locations in Rhino Camp, lack of reliable information sources caused a lot of confusion. People were gathering around the camp managers premises, and many didn’t have the correct documentation causing delays and anger. Local police got frustrated and there were reports of people being beaten. However, when the registration people came to Omugo 4, there was calm as people were aware of how and where to register, and what documentation was required.

Peacebuilding across borders

At the border between the South Sudan and Uganda, in places near the border town of Koboko, yet another community-centred media project is getting underway. It is a border project so the speakerbox podcasts are multilingual, discussing farming and sharing natural resources in Kakwa and Aringa languages. The podcast project is called Voices A 2 Z, meaning that it includes everyone’s voices. The name is in English because this is the language that is shared between both groups.  

Through CDC’s work, community-centred media is becoming recognised as an important tool for peacebuilding on both sides of the border and across the border itself.

Click below to listen to the theme tunes of the two new podcast projects.

Theme tune for Studio Salaam

Theme tune for Voices A 2 Z

A 2 Z and Studio Salaam are peacebuilding components of a wider project, the PAMANA cross-border initiative which seeks to respond to immediate Humanitarian needs, while firming up foundations for the the longer term through Development projects working on sustainable use of natural resources, and through Peacebuilding activities, such as community centred media. (In tech-jargon, this is called the HDP triple nexus!) PAMANA is a collaboration between several local and international NGOs, including Caritas Switzerland, Agency for Accelerated Regional Development (AFARD), Community Development Centre (CDC), and Organic Farming Advisory Organization (OFAO), with technical advice from Swisspeace and BOMA Project. The initiative is supported by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA). Amplifying Voices provides advisory and training support to CDC’s community-centred media work, along with some funding.

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“My name is Hiram and I live in a small village in Maharashtra called Sagpada. Several months ago I was listening to a programme on the speakerbox provided by Seva Social Welfare Foundation, which challenged me to begin growing a kitchen garden to improve the nutrition of my family.  We rarely eat vegetables in our village because they are too expensive, but one day when the Seva team came to distribute the monthly audio programmes, they also gave us packets of vegetable seeds such as brinjal, bhindi (okra) and tomatoes. That evening, I listened to a programme about how eating vegetables would give us better health and I was inspired to start my own kitchen garden. The programmes gave instructions on how to look after the plants and even ideas for cooking with the vegetables that we grew. They said that by regularly adding vegetables into our diet, it would make us and our children healthy and strong.”

Hiram’s crops grew so well he soon had an abundant supply and was able to begin providing food for his family and his neighbours as well.

“Over the next few weeks I tended my new kitchen garden very carefully and watched with joy as my vegetables grew. The soil in our village is very fertile and with good rains, my plants were soon producing delicious vegetables. In fact they were so plentiful, that I had more than I needed for my family and was able to share with my neighbours.  Every evening we enjoyed the results of our garden and over the next few months  I even noticed that my children seemed healthier. I enjoyed tending my new crops so much that in the following months I began visiting neighbouring villages to share my experiences, encouraging them to grow their own gardens. I even began cultivating and giving away seeds from my own land.”

Hiram’s story so inspired Vaidhei, that she contacted Shilpa, Seva’s CEO  with an idea.  She realised that the power of community-centred media to influence people’s attitudes and behaviour was vital, and that if this was backed up with the provision of resources, the possibility for people to change was compelling.    Before long the two organisations were collaborating.  Pagaria launched a crowd-funding project to make seeds available at scale, to villages across the district.  Seva for its part ramped up programme production, promoting and inspiring the value of kitchen gardens in every home while the audience engagement team began distributing seeds with every programme – multiplying  the great work that Hiram had started, reaching many more Adivasi villages.

An Adivasi lady shows the packet of seeds that she’s just received from Seva’s audience engagement team.

Shilpa says, “When we started the Adivasi Voices Project in partnership with Amplifying Voices in 2018, our baseline study showed that malnourishment due to poor nutrition was a major problem across the tribal belt in Maharastra.  The beauty of Hiram’s story is that it shows the community  leading the way.  We believe this new initiative will mark a major change where we will begin to see healthier communities and a reduction in malnutrition and diseases especially among children,” she added.

Besides vegetable seeds Seva’s audience engagement team has now also begun distributing mango saplings, while they continue to make programmes with communities and other service providers to encourage and enable people to use their land more effectively and to develop sustainable livelihoods.

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This week, women from a minority community in Punjab started a series of workshops teaching sewing skills to other women and girls. At the end of the first day, participants and their relatives told the coordinator that they see this workshop as a launch pad to greater things.

Selfie-time at the first sewing class, Sargodha.

Setting up the Roshan Ghar workshop in Sargodha came out of listening to community members, hearing local concerns, and helping to identify the skills and resources that already exist in the community. Three women with skills and motivation offered to provide training to other women and young girls. The local partner found a suitable training room and a gift from an Australian media organisation, FEBC Australia, helped to buy sewing machines for the class.

Amplifying Voices encourage our partners to have these “strengths-based” conversations in any community they work with when starting a community-centred media project. This process of listening to what’s strong in a community can lead to inspiring on-air discussions about community members responding to challenges, and can encourage community members to put their skills to use in new off-air activities. With Roshan Ghar, it is the off-air activities, i.e. the vocational skills classes, that are paving the way for media conversations and inspiring people to reach for their dreams.

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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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Ting Chinese Character for Listen

But what does Ting-listening look like, or sound like in reality? We recently asked Barnabas from Community Development Centre in Uganda to describe their Ting-listening experience as they visited a new community in Yumbe district with a view to developing a new community-centred media project there.

I invite you to listen to what Barnabas said and look out for those five elements of the Ting character.

If it’s tricky to play audio where you are right now, here is what Barnabas said:

This is Barnabas, I’m the development programmes manager of the Community Development Centre.

Yumbe district is one of the new locations for our community-centred media project.

The community once hosted a transit for refugees within their sub-county. And the people are farmers. But many of the people are living in poverty and as a result there were tensions over food, natural resource … that’s forest reserve that is in the Kei mountains.

So we set to go to the Kei mountains to meet the people. The community welcomed us. We visited their homes. We visited some of the existing facilities that are existing within the community. We sat with them under the shade of the trees … the forests in Kei. And in this conversation the community started speaking.

In this process we heard a lot of things. We couldn’t hold, you know our emotions as we observed about the realities of the situation on the ground.

The forest reserve is so large so what happens is that the community … in the early years has given the government land because the government requested land for use for a period of time until the community population has grown, so they would have back their land.

But unfortunately they couldn’t get back the land. The population has grown so they don’t have a place to do the farming that they do, so that they can have more food for their families

And they want to also use the forest for building, and they also wanted to understand more about how they can be able to have other sources of livelihood and change their situation.

In all this it enabled us to understand more of what actually this community is facing. It helped us also to go farther and have conversation with the relevant stakeholders.

Right now the community is working together to set up a community-centred media project. And these Kei people will have their voices out as they discuss about their issues more.

So they will be more of listening to each other as also we have listened to them and understanding their issues and there will be more of working together with the community and the community working together among themselves to solve the issues that are affecting their communities.

Ting-listening is something that continues throughout the life of a community-centred media project, but it is especially important in the early phases, as we, our partners and community members discern together what to hope for from the project. The Kei project is currently in this early Ting-listening phase.

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