January 28, 2013, Kathmandu. The Asia Pacific region of World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC Asia Pacific) has concluded a training workshop for women community broadcasters of South Asia for ‘Enhancing Access to Community Media, Promoting Positive Social Change and Peace Building Through Community Broadcasting.’ The workshop was held from February 19-22 , 2013 in New Delhi, India and was organised in collaboration with UNESCO Chair on Community Media (University of Hyderabad) and Community Radio Forum of India. The workshop was financially supported by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Open Society Foundation (OSF), and UNICEF.
Altogether 32 women community broadcasters from South Asian countries – Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka participated in the workshop that was led by Bianca Miglioretto, Women International Network (AMARC-WIN) representative for Asia Pacific. Venu Arora of Ideosync Media Combine, Rumini Vemraju of Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia, Ekta Mittal of MARAA, and Anuja Shukla supported as co-trainers.
Earlier, speaking at the inauguration of the workshop, Ashish Sen, President of AMARC Asia Pacific highlighted AMARC’s emphasis on capacity building of community broadcasters in the region. “This workshop is a follow-up of similar training programs held earlier in Nepal and Thailand and aimed at responding to the demands made by community broadcasters for supporting capacity building in various areas of broadcasting,” he said. He reiterated AMARC’s commitment for supporting capacity building for broadcasters in the days ahead as well.
The workshop held in New Delhi provided practical and technical skills to enhance capacity of the participants for producing effective radio programs on issues and subjects such as climate change adaptation, food security, disaster risk reduction, poverty reduction, empowering of the marginalized, conflict resolution, peace-building, and promoting positive social change at local community levels. Participants were trained to handle these issues through their respective community radios in a way that is relevant and useful to the local communities so as to increase the impact of community broadcasting.
