The UNESCO Chair on Community Media will continue to work for the next three years with the following objectives, as envisaged in the original agreement:
- Research and document best practices in community media
- Strengthen community mobilization and participation
- Conduct and enable participatory monitoring and evaluation
- Set up open access repository of information on community media
- Make available key information on licensing, policy and technology
- Build community capacities on media production and management
- Engage with policymakers for a more democratic media landscape
More specifically, the Chair would like to take up fresh activities or intensify on-going efforts in the following areas:
Research/Publications
Undertake short-term research projects in various aspects of community media, and seek to publish the research outcomes.
Develop a special focus on ‘Women in Community Communication’, an area in which the Chair has already started some preliminary work.
Knowledge Dissemination
Expand the focus to encompass community media in totality through increased focus on video, newspapers, mobile telephones, online forums.
The framework developed for mapping community media in South Asia will be used to create a database of initiatives, which will be available in a consolidated document online, once completed.
Capacity Building and Sharing
Explore the possibility of using the CAMP framework in West Africa.
Establish a Community Media Centre in Chhattisgarh as a means of sustaining the Adolescent Engagement Using Media Tools (AEMT) Project.
Build networks for capacity sharing in West Africa, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives for both community radio and CAMP.
Continue using CR-CIT as the core platform around which capacities will be built on community radio stations in different parts of the world for continuous improvement and self-assessment of their performance.
Networking
Build alliances with different social movements so that the potential of community media for social change could be explored more productively.
Utilize SANCOM as a platform for expanding on advocacy, policy intervention, CR training and self-improvement in the South Asia region.
Policy Advocacy
Produce periodically working/position papers from the Chair on various pressing issues facing the community media sector
Continue to use the range of media resources available to articulate the need for a pluralistic media landscape around the world, especially for enhancing citizens’ access to media tools. These interventions will complement face-to-face interactions with governments, regulators and civil society actors.