5th October - Preparatory Course

What do you think was the purpose of the home stay?

This question of Sacha’s had answers like “ I might face the same conditions out there” “After the home stay I am confident that I can manage any where” ”Taking on the challenge of communication in an unknown environment”

Sacha said the main point of the home stay was to see if individual was ready to take on the challenges of the real world, to see if one could adapt to a new environment, and finally, looking at bridging the gap between theory sessions and field experiences.

Another question of Sacha’s was – Did any of the sessions help you in your home stay? Daniel found the session on discrimination very useful, because he met people who “did not like black people”. Other sessions that helped were those on stress management and the session on personality development and understanding. Sacha capped it off with telling participants not to romanticize the community life and not expect extreme good or bad experiences in a community stay.

Media and communication development

Mr. Ashish Sen from VOICES, a community radio program service, started off this session in a very interesting manner. After asking what the participants expected from his session, he stated what he had come to deliver, and created a common ground of expectations. Then he made the participants play Marshall Mcluhan’s communication paradigm game. Banda was given a picture that he had to describe to the participants, who all had to draw their idea of the picture based on what Banda was saying. For the first round, no one was allowed to clarify doubts with Banda. Then Banda described the picture for the second time, but this time the others were allowed to ask questions that would help them clarify the picture. Needless to say, the first round produced varied pictures, and the second round, because of its participative nature, got everyone to create pictures that were very close what Banda had in his hand.
Mr. Ashish used this as an example for basic media communication, and talked briefly about the sender-receiver message/media model. He said that for effective communication for development, the receiver of the message needed also to be the producer of information, and not just remain a consumer. He gave the example of Budikote, a village on the border of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. This combination produced interesting linguistic and cultural mixes. The local Karnataka radio, Akashvani, though it broadcast community development messages, could not address this mix of culture. He then talked about how creating a community radio station addressing the needs of the locals made a huge difference to the community, simply because the model had created a feedback mechanism of relevant information for the locals themselves. They have appropriately called their radio station Namma Dhwani – Our Voice
For his second session, Mr. Ashish started off with a small discussion on the three types of media – Public, Private and Community. Public media is usually one-way communication, private media has its agenda for profit, and therefore the hope for change lies with community media. Since community media is driven by the needs of the community, fastest social change is possible this way. He gave several examples of how community radio showcases the power of the people – how monarchy in Nepal could not stifle the voices of people and radio stations like Radio Sagarmatha and Radio Lumbini were so powerful in community reach that they forced the authorities to change the law for the benefit of the people.
The highlight of the session was a little demonstration of a mobile radio station, a simple briefcase model that runs on a car battery. When connected to an antenna it can broadcast to a range of 3-4 km. Mr. Ramamurthy from All India Radio demonstrated the set, and excited participants heard themselves on a small radio. Mr. Ashish finished with several brilliant examples on the power of community radio. The most powerful one was the example of Budikote, where for the first time Panchayat elections were covered live on a mobile phone and broadcast and cablecast to the community. It was truly a marvellous session that opened people’s eyes to the power of community media.

Five takeaways from Mr. Ashish

People centred communication
Principles
Two-way communication
Three tiered communication – pubic, private and community media
The power of Community Radio

As responsible people, let us ask ourselves, “Do we get the change we deserve or do we deserve the change we get?”

Where does the media stand on development?

Here are some statistics about how much attention the media pays to development. The Centre for Development and Learning conducted a survey on how much coverage development gets from mainline newspapers in India. Watch the numbers over the course of a year.
8549 articles concentrated on Foreign Investment. In contrast only 988 articles talked about education, out of which 288 articles focused on elementary education, and only 59 articles even concentrated on rural education.
The Times of India, out of its 24 daily pages devoted 4% to development, The Hindustan Times had 3% coverage, Deccan Herald had 4% and The Pioneer stood at 8 %. Coverage on craft, gender and the girl child was the least, followed by drinking water and NGOs.
As Mr. Ashish put it, “Statistics don’t bleed, people do”. Time to wake up?

Spotlight

Norman Nacion from Philippines says “Mabu Hay Pilipinas” – Greetings from Philippines in Tagalog, the language spoken in the country. Norman is a Tilapia specialist, and tilapia is a kind of freshwater fish, which is big business in the Philippines. He is a graduate of fisheries from Central Luzon State University, and has been tilapia specialist for 8 years now. He is going to Angola to train the people there in new methods of tilapia culturing, harvest and growth. He finds the course very helpful, especially the session on stress management. He is an extensive traveller and loves basketball. He finds India a very hospitable and friendly place. On being asked for a quote he says, “Take care of your health, because people lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health”

The basics of communication

Mr. Suvendu, the director of Drik, India took a session that took participants back to the basics of communication. He started off with the example of Maggi noodles, a two-minute meal that is very popular today in India and many other parts of the world. Nestle, the makers, came to India with a marketing campaign that turned out to be a disaster. They decided to consult Alyque Padamsee on why the product had failed. Alyque, India’s ad guru, quickly spotted the problem. The British company in charge of the ad campaign had targeted women as the primary consumers. Alyque said that this was a faulty approach, because in India women are expected to cook for the family, and cooking is a service provided to the rest of the family. Women are not expected to serve a meal in two minutes. He suggested that they target the product as a quick after-school snack for kids. The campaign worked admirably after they changed the target group. This got Mr. Suvendu to the basics of media strategy

Defining the problem
Finding targets of opportunity
Assessing feasibility of activities

All communication arises from these eternal questions-
Who am I? Who needs to know? Why do they need to know? How will they find out? How do I want them to respond?

And communication is defined as, “Any act by which one person gives to or receives from another person about that persons needs, desires, perceptions, knowledge or affective states.”

Finally he made the various groups discuss the following questions - If you have to communicate the message of your org to the host family, what factors would help you? What factors would obstruct you?