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In Special Consultative Status with the UN Economic & Social Council
Associated with the UN Department of Global Communications

Supported by

Implemented by

Total Project Costs: Euro 57,868

Project Duration: 1st January 2019 to 31st December 2019

Location: Dhaka and 18 Community Radio Station Coverage areas in 16 Districts of the country

Implementing Partners: The project implemented by BNNRC in collaboration with 17 community Radio stations of Bangladesh, besides Ministry of Information (MOI) and related departments and civil-society groups.

Background:

In Bangladesh, community radio (CR) is considered as an appropriate channel of information for the millions of rural disadvantage communities. This is crucial, where state media focus on the capital and lion part of the rural grassroots communities are unable or hardly able to read and write. Considering this scenario, no one could oppose about the massive contribution of community radios in dissemination of various development news and information as well as life skill messages to educate, entertain, motivate the rural communities using their local dialect. As an example, according to a survey on community radio listeners, 61% (1031 respondents out of 1700 respondents) have agreed that CR programs have raised awareness on the right of their local citizens, along with social safety net programs etc. of them, 52% of the CR listeners were in the age group between 18 to 30 (source: Community Radio Listeners Survey, October 2017, a study conducted by Dr. Nazneen Ahmed, Senior Research Fellow, Bangladesh Institute of Development Study – BIDS, Dhaka, Bangladesh).

Despite of its colossal contribution, the radio stations are still struggling from donation to voluntary contribution, are uncertain of their existence. For successful lobby and advocacy made by this project, now the CR Station managements as well as the concerned development partners need to be oriented more about the financial provisions of the new policy including the Community Radio Trust Fund (ratified by the government) for ensuring of their financial independence for the CR Stations.

The proposed project titled: “Strengthening Lobby & Advocacy to Contribute in Community Media Development” 2019, has designed based on results and progress 2016 to 2018 activities. It is to be noted that our previous learning is adopted here including some new activities (details in 1.2 Activity Briefing). The focus of the project is the upcoming challenges of community media in the context of fourth industrial revolution (4th IR) in Bangladesh.

The upcoming project activities will address the thematic areas of media and accountability as well as gender and media in line with RTI Act. Monitor the application and practice of revised ‘Community Radio Installation, Broadcast and Operation Policy, 2018 and continue lobby and advocacy for further improvement of community media will also address during the implementation of this project.

Beneficiary of this project will be the BNNRC staffs under this project along with the Broadcasters and the concerned management team of 18 CR Stations including other concerned development partners from the local government institutions, private sectors and CSOs, media actors will be involved in the overall project implementation process.

Overall objectives of the Project is

  1. To identify a strategic plan of BNNRC for its future direction.
  2. To support CR Stations in creating economic enabling environment
  3. Promoting Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2009 through community media in Bangladesh.

Thematic areas: Media & Accountability, Gender & Media,.

Expected Results: An enabling environment for the media conducive to freedom of expression whereas, the professional journalists and media actors serve the interests of the public and act as a watchdog on their behalf

Activities (Jan- June, 2019)

1) Strategic Plan of BNNRC for its future direction

Bangladesh is going to enter of middle earning country by 2024, so donor support mayn’t be continued no longer for charity and poverty reduction interventions in coming days. On the other hand, fourth industrial revolution (4th IR) also a big challenge for the country people of Bangladesh in regards to equipped our young generations. To address these aforesaid issues, BNNRC need to assess and identify its strength, opportunities and way out in line with the upcoming challenges to prepare the organization for the new funding and other realities beyond 2020.

Therefore, a framework needs to be developed by BNNRC, which will guide the organization for getting an appropriate strategic direction. In this regard, BNNRC will be organized 2 to 3 meetings with the staffs and members of the Board of Trust.

A 3 daylong residential workshop will be organized along with all staffs of the organization for setting strategies and plans of BNNRC. Two facilitators (from national and international) will be assigned to conduct this workshop. In this action, the team members will develop new strategies for BNNRC by capturing their strength, weakness, opportunities and challenges with a view to develop an action plan for future direction for the next 3-5year plan.

After the workshop the draft plan will be shared with the peer groups (like minded media organizations) as well as the stakeholders (the representatives of CR Stations and development partners including the resource pool of BNNRC) of BNNRC through organizing daylong two separate meetings with a view to taking their feedbacks and concern.

Afterwards, a final version of the strategic plan of BNNRC will be produced and disseminated with the concerned stakeholders.

2) Parliamentarian Caucus on Community Media Development

Community radio (CR) is considered as one of the best tools for information dissemination for the millions of our rural disadvantage communities. This is a crucial issue, where mainstream or state media focus on the capital and majority living in rural areas do not have access in media, whereas, most of them are illiterate.

Despite of its colossal contribution of community radios, in bringing social transformation of rural societies, the radio stations still are struggling from donation to voluntary contribution and uncertain of their existence.

Through a successful lobby and advocacy has made by this project, a new CR policy has been ratified by the government in 2018. In continuation, now the newly elected parliament members (the election, December, 2018) need to be oriented more about the approved policy along with its financial provisions and CR Trust Fund related issues for ensuring financial solvency of the radio stations.

In this action, a total of five to six members of the concerned parliamentary standing committee for media will be oriented on the current situation of community media and its importance and needs in regards to rural grassroots communities including their roles and responsibilities for promoting this people centric media.

The concerned parliamentarians will be influenced to prepare, protect and contribute in development of this sector, specially play an important role in economic enabling environment for community radios, as a part of Intermediate Outcome – 01 of this project and will contribute their efforts in ensuring CR Stations to receive supports from CR trust fund along with other financial provisions mentioned in the revised policy.

Through this consultative efforts, cooperation and commitments in this regard, two Caucus Meetings will be organized at Dhaka. As an outcome, the concerned parliamentary member will play a proactive role for creating enabling environment in regards to financial sustainability of the CR Stations.

In this connection, a quarterly based knowledge pack on community media will be generated for the Parliamentarians which help them to raise their voice in the National Parliament.

3. Day Observations Celebrate Move 4 Women March (on the eve of International women Day )

Through this project, every year (since 2016), all CR Stations celebrate Men 4 Women March (on the eve of International women Day on 8 March), besides observing World Press Freedom Day (03 May), UN International Day for Universal Access to Information (28 September). BNNRC along with all CR Stations have organized various campaign programs, rally, produce and broadcast various radio programs to celebrate the days.

This year, taking supports from FPU, BNNRC will celebrate Move 4 Women March on 8th March, 2019. Rest of the Day observations will be celebrated by BNNRC along with the 18 CR Stations through their own contributions.

For wider mobilization of the community about the outstanding roles and contributions of women in the community and society, all CR Stations will celebrate this Day through on-line campaigns. The station will produce and broadcast an inter-active radio magazine program followed by a live talk show. The community leaders including the local government officials and elected members will be invited in the talk-show programs along with the representatives from right-holder groups.

Like previous, BNNRC will arrange a campaign program in collaboration with an educational institute. Afterwards, BNNRC will collect the audio-clips, pictures of the radio talk-shows to develop a video presentation. The video will be shared through social media as a part of this campaign.

4. Newsletter – Bangla (Print) two time:

BNNRC will produce and publish two issues of Community Media Newsletter.

Publication and distribution of newsletter will disseminate the updated information on community radio sectoral progress and its contribution to development endeavors. Besides, easy and pictorial paper sheet had also been developed and distributed within the listeners, where they would get all the directions to ask for any kind of information to the authority, related to their development issues.

The huge circulation of newsletter also contributes to mobilize various donor groups, scholars, researchers, academicians etc. along Govt.  officials about BNNRC as well as the community media sector in the country. A total of 4000 copies printed newsletter (2000 copies for each issue) will be published.

5. Promoting CR Stations as a Social Enterprise: Sustainable model (Self-reliance strategies for CRS):

The financial sustainability is a major concern of all community radio stations in Bangladesh, especially the moment, when the donor fund is declining as the country has achieved its ambition to reach middle-income status by 2021.

For achieving financial sustainability of the CR Stations, last year, BNNRC organized a series of workshop, where the participants (members CR Management and Advisory Committees including all core broadcasters) were concerned about the need and importance for searching their local potential fund sources besides allocated commercial broadcasting issues of the govt. (allocated 10% advertisements). The participants have separately developed an outline of an action plan for fund raising issues, targeting their financial solvency of their own CR Station. Some CR Stations already found various sources immediate after these workshops.

Based on that action plan, BNNRC proposed to organize station wise sensitization meetings with the authorized officials of local Chamber of Commerce, E-learning centers (Access to Information- A2I) and other government institutions along with local business houses for building network and linkages with CR Stations. These meetings will help CR Stations for searching and identify potential vendors and creating opportunities for income generating projects in achieving self-reliance and reducing donor dependency of their respected CR Stations.

6. Gender Sensitive Content Monitoring of the Community Radio Programs:

Community radio has a moral obligation to scaling up and facilitate women’s involvement at all levels of decision-making and programming; ensure that women’s voices and concerns are part of the daily news agenda; women are portrayed positively as active members of society; and support to acquire the technical skills and confidence to control their communications.

Considering of its importance, from the beginning of inceptions of all CR stations, BNNRC (taking from the supports from FPU), has been implementing gender responsive communication following a gender equality policy for CR produced by FPU. Besides, a gender equality policy for community radio stations (in Bangla version) is also being introduced. So far, a total of 242 rural broadcasters including BNNRC staffs had received trainings on gender sensitive communication.

Altogether 144 hours CR contents are now produced by these trained CR Broadcasters. This proposed activity, “Gender Sensitive Content Monitoring of the Community Radio Programs” is designed to monitor how CR stations are now practicing gender responsive communication through following the CR gender policy. This initiative will offer insights into how CR has the potential to recast the dominant and gender in public sphere.

A gender responsive expert will be assigned to monitor the CR programs in line with gender sensitivity or using gender lens. In this connection, the responsible officer, BNNRC, will collect 20-25 CR programs on random basis. After analysis these programs for striving to shape, in terms of gender responsive program production, participation, representation, decision making of the female broadcasters of the CR Stations.

A finding report will be produced by the Expert for further improvement in reducing the gap following a gender lens. Recommendations will contribute to enhance the inclusion of more women in CR as well as the listeners of the respective communities, to balance the gender gap.

Contribution of this project in National Policies:

The project is contributing to UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in many ways, especially for the goals 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,13 & 16. Goal 16.10 is to ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreement. Additionally the activities also concerned in contributing the 7th 5-year plan of the government in line with SDGs targets. One of the important aspects of this project is to disseminate information on government services and to effectively engage the government officials, local elected representatives and civil society organizations in the project implementation process.

Annual Progress Report

NGO Affairs Bureau

Approved: AFD-6

Agreement: View Pdf

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CBLCCMDFWJ/

Contact-

Mr. Hirendra Pandit
Project Coordinator
Tel: +88 02 48116262 | +88 02 9101479 | +88 02 9138501
Cell: +880 1726311101
Email: hiren@bnnrc.net

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