Community Radio Stations Meet 2021

Community radio stations from 7 districts of Rajasthan came together for a collaborative alliance

Representatives of community radio stations from different districts of Rajasthan came together for a day-long workshop at the hotel Polo Inn lounge & suites, Jaipur on Wednesday, 15 December. The workshop was organized with the joint efforts of Vaagdhara and UNICEF on the theme ‘collective efforts to address the emerging priorities of children.

From discussing their role as a collective alliance to grievances on the challenges that they are currently facing, 7 radio stations of FM Sikar, Chetna Radio (Hanumangarh), Vagad Radio (Banswara), Radio Banasthali (Tonk), Radio Madhuban (Mount Abu), Kamalwani (Jhunjhunu) and Tilonia Radio (Ajmer) participated in the discussion and knowledge sharing.

The session was opened by Jayesh Joshi, Secretary VAAGDHARA, highlighting the need to strengthen the consistent relationship of community radio stations. He said that community radio stations have been influential in delivering information to the community as well as effective engagement with them. community radio is meant to raise the voices of the community and efforts are required for collaboration in Rajasthan.

Manjaree Pant from UNICEF emphasized the significance of collective collaboration and creating a common path for information sharing for making Rajasthan’s community radio a powerful and strong voice to be heard and given recognition by the government.

After the power pack opening, the workshop started with the presentations by the radio stations present on the occasion. Each one highlighted the work they have been doing to date and also shared the method and innovations they have been doing over the years and also presented planning for collaboration on innovation, content development, community engagement and advocacy. Besides, they highlighted the challenges they are facing in this process of spreading awareness in less heard communities.

Mr Chandra Shekhar, deputy director of integrated child protection scheme from the Department of Child Rights said that the work done by community radio is highly appreciable and the department would want to connect with community radio stations for propagating government schemes that can benefit the target communities. Besides, he assured that he would try to help the community radio stations get their much-needed recognition.

Mr K.M. Noordeen, SPM Rajeevika shared that Rajeevika is associated with 27 lakhs households in 28000 villages in Rajasthan who can be reached by the community radio stations through their programmes. He further recommended all the CRS to develop their applications of community radio and prepare programmes schedules as well as slots for specific programmes.

Jayesh Joshi, secretary, VAAGDHARA said that all the community radio stations have to come together at one platform and create an alliance so that their unified voices are heard strongly. He added that community radio’s existence can never be questioned as they have been the only strong medium to connect with communities that stay in distant areas where language, technology, and everything is a big challenge.