Learning with Community Media: Stories from the Commonwealth and Latin America

Abstract

Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education. – Paulo Freire Community media, from conventional radio or video to new online or digital media forms, have unique, untapped potential for education. They are able to reach large numbers of people at low cost, and especially those who are typically hard to access because of location, age, education, gender, economic circumstance or social situation. However, the key to optimising the educational potential of community media is “participatory communication” — which, as Freire suggests, is centred on dialogue. If educational and developmental aims are to be well and truly met through community media, all stakeholders must engage in dialogue, not just “on the air” but throughout all aspects of the educational process. Learning with Community Media: Stories from the Commonwealth and Latin America presents the experiences of a wide cross-section of education, development and community media groups in conceiving, designing, delivering and evaluating participatory communication programmes in more than a dozen developing countries of the Commonwealth and Latin America. The 24 chapters in this collection provide a well-rounded profile of educational participatory communication from the perspective of facilitators and trainers, stakeholder agencies and individuals, and the participants themselves — the latter ranging from farmers, social activists and indigenous groups to children and youth, expectant mothers, women combating domestic violence, and people at risk for HIV/AIDS. Comparatively little has been written about community media as an educational tool, particularly with regard to its potential as a means of delivering non-formal education to citizen listeners and learners. Learning with Community Media helps fill this gap, summarising a wealth of practical experience, methods and techniques and offering invaluable “lessons learned.” At the same time, it shows how education might be placed more squarely on the agenda of community media groups — and how community media might be used by developmental agencies and organisations to achieve their education goals