This is my second to last (or penultimate) post before my volunteer contract with the Isabel Learning Network finishes.

I thought I’d end with a reflection on the last 21 months I’ve spent working with the Isabel Learning Network.

The Network has flourished from a collection of inactive dust covered machines to having a majority of stations back on air.

We’ve had fantastic training from the Regional Media Centre/Commonwealth of Learning as well as SIDT/SOLMAS and our reporters are building up their production and news reporting skills.

We’ve worked hard to straighten out the management issues and build a solid foundation for the Network.

We’re slowly building our network of supports and look forward to working with them in the future.

Buala FM in particular is like a caterpillar that has turned into the most spectacular butterfly imaginable, with the four dedicated staff producing content for broadcast 7 nights a week. This week we’ve aired:

• a cyclone safety update with interviews from the Disaster Management office and the hospital
• An interview about the Rural Advancement Microprojects Programme about how they’re working with the community
• Talked to our National Member about his work and about the recent court decision to throw out an electoral petition against him
• Interviewed the General-Manager of the Isabel Development Company about their 40-year anniversary of serving Isabel province.

And, most importantly, we’ve had really positive community feedback, including the very flattering comment that we sound ‘just like the Honiara stations’. We’ve also had plenty of suggestions for areas to improve, which is the best thing we could ask for right now.

The road ahead is still long and full of pot holes and other obstacles but the Isabel Learning Network is definitely on the its way to sustainability.

Congratulations everyone!

Samantha, Eddie and Yorgan in the Buala FM Station

I met with the station Manager, Frank Apwaka and he gave me the background and information about the station.

The station was set up by the Baptist Union in 2004-5 although it was planned much earlier. The BU are one of the organisations making up the Baptist Alliance, based in Mt Hagen. The main objective was to provide educational radio for the remote sub-district of Oksapmin, which is part of the Telefomin District in Sandaun Province. Actually, it should have been called Oksapmin Community Radio Station but Tekin was used in the funding application. Originally to be located elsewhere, the decision was made to base the station in Tekin was due to the peace prevailing in that area, with none of the tribal fighting that still happens in other places.

Funding for the initial establishment was from the Canada Fund, Ausaid, and Baptist World Aid. The station was set up with assistance from a Melbourne expert, Ron Ehrke from the Australian Film and Television School (I hope I have that right). Training was given in broadcasting, reporting and journalism.

When fully functioning the station employed three people full time (Manager, Programming and Production and Receptionist) and eight volunteers. The station is owned by the Baptist Union and has a local Community Board.

However, the station has been closed since September 2011 due to failure of the CD and tape players and some challenged resulting from the transition to a sustainable operation. Frank hopes the station will be reopened shortly.

Coverage is about 50% of Oksapmin due to the mountainous terrain and a repeater is planned. In fact, I was treated to a strenuous climb up through the rainforest to a ridge on Baliye mountain at 8,000 ft where the mass of roots, decaying logs and mud gave way to a clearing and a spectacular view down across the Strickland Gorge. The clearing had been made by a minerals exploration company for surveying purposes, and it has a rough helipad and GPS survey point. The radio station partners hope to use this as access to a repeater site to be constructed nearby along the ridge.

The station is well equipped with an Elan Audio 8-channel mixing desk and multiple Denon CD and cassette players, Niles monitors and a 100W EX2-100 transmitter. A bank of approximately 2KW of solar panels provides enough power for several hours per day operation – the station on average broadcasts for 7 hours per day. A tall mast and very professional looking antenna array complete the setup.

Studio is based on live and analogue pre-recorded (tapes, CDs). The main languages of broadcasting are PNG’s pidjin language, Tok Pisin, and the local Oksapmin language. With so many (800+) documented languages in PNG, the communities would rarely if ever hear their language on national broadcasting.

The Baptist Union office in Mt Hagen sends in tapes on the Missionary Aviation Fellowship small aircraft, which land next to the station on a perilous looking short strip, steeply sloped, with a 9,000 mountain at one end! For instance, the station rebroadcasts a selection from Wan Smalbag Theatre of Vanuatu, and Radio Australia’s Tok Pisin programmes where people from PNG speak on a variety of topics which are very informative and interesting to the Oksapmin people. Local content consists of talks by local experts, including the health workers at the adjacent clinic, agriculturalists and educators.

Frank was proud of the local focus in their news broadcasts, He described his investigative reporting on important local issues, and how people visiting the village market provide views and opinions. National news is covered by reviewing the newspapers, which even though arriving several days late are still current for the people of the area. A Tok Save programme allows people to make announcements and individual messages.

As Oksapmin has just had a mobile tower installed by Digicel PNG, the mobile is now available for people to call in. However, this is too recent to have made an impact yet.

What have been the main achievements? Frank cites improvements in life style and behaviour, as a result of being better informed. He has also noticed improvements in language spoken by young people in particular, and in their communication skills. The radio content has contributed to enriching the educational environment in the area. Monitoring has been planned – listener surveys – but not yet conducted, to assess the impacts more scientifically.

The challenges faced by the station are those quite often experienced by community radio stations, including our own such as the Isabel Province stations. Firstly, Frank explained that the local ownership of the station should be represented by the Community Board, but this is proving ineffective and needs strengthening or reinstating. Secondly, the financing model is shaky, and as a result the paid staff, previously employed by the Baptist Union presumably with project-based funds have been laid off and he himself had not been paid for some time. Frank wished that the community could support the station more including financially. Secondly, minor technical issues have relied on external capacities resulting in the station going off air. Thirdly, more training is needed.

We discussed the experiences in Solomon Islands and Frank was very interested in the Healthy Communities programme and the methodology developed for Community Learning Programmes (CLPs). We hoped that a CLP workshop might be held when the station reopens, to encourage the participatory input to production. He was also interested in moving into digital content, for instance training in use of computers and digital tools such as Audacity, and noted that many mobile phone snow being used in the area have both FM radios and voice recorders. Thus, training in the use of mobiles for supporting learning, enabling more feedback from the community and monitoring would be useful. I explained how in Isabel we have used inexpensive equipment such as small netbook computers and the community teams have produced excellent digital audio productions with only basic computer skills.

I also offered to put Frank in touch with Aloysius and Maria at new Dawn FM in Buka. Networking Telecentres would help to end isolation, share skills and content and bolster sustainability.

All in all, a very interesting discovery!

Community radio is ideally placed to promote the conservation of local language, especially in countries such as PNG with its hundreds of local languages. There may be no place on national channels owing to this diversity. Through our native language we understand our identities and relationship with our environment. This was brought home to me listening to Gary Laka, an officer of PNG Sustainable Development Programme, who was describing the metaphoric conversations and stories of the older people in his community, for instance in delicate negotiations over a customary exchange, or in describing nature – a coconut tree described as a young woman with hair blowing in the wind, giving nuances that belie important values that could not be portrayed in English or Tok Pisin. Destroy the language and you destroy those essential nuances that define a culture, it would seem to me. Gary explained that when he gives a speech in his home village he will be using maybe up to 50% or so of mixed-in English or Tok Pisin words, compared to the elders. I can also recall a community meeting in Buala, Isabel, where one of the most common comments from the older people was concerning the correctness of the language used in broadcasting – highlighting the fact that when using local language in broadcasting, it must be used accurately!

Perhaps it is timely to reflect on what has been achieved since the current partnership for development in regard to Isabel Province community radio network started in 2009 with Commonwealth of Learning’s Learning4Peace programme. We proved then that the youth networks in Isabel, given direction by a ground breaking Youth Policy and Action Plan, could effectively mobilise to inject new vitality to the existing community radio stations which until that point were operating somewhat in isolation. We also demonstrated that new digital media technology suitable for small scale local broadcast productions were practicable, training youth members with very basic or no computer skills to use a netbook and a voice recorder with open source Audacity software to record and edit simple digital audio. Several of the netbooks procured in 2009 with funding from Ausaid (CSP) are still operating, and the capacity seeded at that stage was then built on in the next phase under COL’s Healthy Communities programme. The quality of the productions of the Isabel Health Communities series, some of which can be listened to in Isabel section of this blog website (under Archives), is witness to the fact that you do not need commercial grade equipment or advanced broadcasting or digital media skills to be creative and productive and make a real impact, loaded with all the added power that local and participatory radio can bring. The current powerhouse of creative energy unleashed by the facilitators and participants in the recent workshop in Buala, Jan 2012, is witness to the effective partnership and the model for the design of learning programmes for radio developed in Isabel and around the world under COL’s Healthy Communities programme. This model can now be used as a framework for regular educational radio production concerning many topics and sectors.

I believe there is a key difference compared to the commercial mode of broadcasting, in that we are talking more about “learning” than “communication”. Thus, we must emphasise this by speaking of “learning objectives” rather than “communication objectives”, and seek ways to support and monitor the effectiveness of the learning. A research component would be very timely, and if implemented in a project structure could also provide some opportunities and incentives for the hard working volunteers. With the increasing coverage and affordability of mobile networks we can also think of ways to harness it to encourage community feedback and mobiles to support learning.

The workshop was funded by the Commonwealth of Learning and facilitated by Rita Narayan from the Regional Media Centre at the Secretariat of the Pacific Communities in Fiji. As well as representatives from seven of the eight FM stations, participants included reps from the Diocese of Ysabel, Youth and Education Divisions, Health Promotions, Save the Children Australia, Isabel Investment Corporation and Royal Solomon Islands Police Force.

The 20 participants learnt basic radio journalism skills such as interviewing and using different radio formats. They also designed three Healthy Community radio education programmes on the themes teenage pregnancy, domestic violence and rubbish disposal. The team produced an almost complete three episode programme for the rubbish disposal theme, collecting material that included interviews with hospital staff, the tourism department, a ship captain and vox pops from the market, as well as this catchy jingle and funny skit from episode one.

Rickson from Sigana FM interviews the captain of the MV Estrella about littering

Stakeholders also discussed future programmes that they would design and work with the FM stations to produce.

FM operators and stakeholders designing the littering programme

Not bad for a group in which a majority of participants couldn’t even turn on a digital recorder at the start of the week! The group finished on a high with stakeholders and FM operators alike all expressing their desire to see their new skills developed and put into practice straight away.

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Our hardworking reporters at Buala FM have been busy making this a very community Christmas. Over the last week the station has broadcast Christmas and New Years greetings from around the community, community service messages from the police about public safety over Christmas and messages from Provincial Government representatives including the Premier and Principal Adminstration Officer, as well as our National MP. There’s also been plenty of events to build our news reporting. We’ve also been practising our editing skills by putting together a short community service message about the new Tobacco Control Act that came into force at the start of this year.

What a great start to 2012!

TB Community Service Message

Control your Drink

Workshop outputs, critical for success in capacity building requirements, include target audience needs assessment, a Sustainability plan, Volunteering skills development and training and Member and Supporter Management Systems.

Special note of thanks must go to David Leeming from Leeming Consulting and Claire Varley, the Networked Comm. Officer with Isabel Prov. Govt. Their contribution in Discussion Papers, practical advice and demonstrations was a highlight. Thank you to Jennifer Wate and staff from SIDT, and founder Dr. John Roughan for their contributions.

Here is the text:

I’ve stepped in a lot of poo this year. Dog poo, pig poo, other people’s poo, on one particularly memorable night my own poo. It’s as disgusting as it sounds but, you know, poo happens.

For the past 15 months I’ve been living in provincial Solomon Islands volunteering with AusAID’s Australian Volunteers for International Development program. The program brings in bright-eyed volunteers to work with and help build the capacity of organisations in developing countries.

I step in a lot of poo because a majority of provincial Solomons is without things like electricity, phones, decent water sources and sanitation, which means the P.F.P (Place for Pooing: technical term) is often a designated part of the beach or bush. Often I go to these places at night. Often without a torch. You’d think I’d learn…

I adore my work because I’m passionate about development and also because I like lying in a hammock drinking coconuts. I’m pretty anti-poverty – like 99 per cent. And what I’ve learnt about poverty – other than wear shoes when you do number twos – is that in order to truly tackle it, we need to treat people living in poverty as the competent, capable, clever human beings they are. My program works from this belief, with a majority of us volunteers working alongside local counterparts. Often we learn more than we impart. But the focus truly is partnership.

This means taking a realistic view on how people will react when we deliver services. People are people so when you build a new school of course the kids don’t explode with excitement. Kids in the Solomons are like kids everywhere – they find maths boring, live for long weekends and LOSE IT when a bird flies into the classroom.

We shouldn’t be anti-poverty because we want to feel good about ourselves – do the Special K Challenge or get a daring new haircut if you want that. We should be anti-poverty because it’s the right thing to do. Because that’s the kind of world we should live in. We’re all just people, regardless of where you were born or into what conditions. And we all deserve to live in a world that nurtures and supports us.

Getting back to the poo, (‘must we?’ I hear you say), I’m glad it happened to me. (And look, with another five months to go, no doubt these little piggies will tiptoe through the tulips some more). It’s made me a better person. Because there’s nothing like human scat between your toes to bring you back down to Earth and remind you that we’re all of us just people, only some of us were born in a place with far greater opportunities and options than others.

So be anti-poverty. Be vocal about it. But be the kind of anti-poverty that is pro-people and understands that everyone in this world is capable of enacting real change, especially if we work together.

We can’t even begin to tackle poverty if we walk around pretending to be the experts. It doesn’t work, and eventually, someday, you’ll step in poo.

Check out the entire article here.