WeTrainourVolunteers sotheyHaveBasicSkills, KnowledgeandEthicsof CommunityJournalism

In Uganda, Africa’s largest refugee hosting nation, “media is made local” in refugee camps, says a refugee-led organization as it lays community radios that project local voices and spark local conversations around community-concern issuesinthesettlements.

From natural resources like local forests to relief cuts, refugees and native Ugandans find a local parliament to say their voice on pressing matters through locally owned and run radios, including Voices A-Z in Bidibidi, Africa’s largest refugeehostingsettlementwithmorethan270,000refugees.

CAJ Africa contributor, Alison Lemeri sat down with Barnabas Samuel, a South Sudanese refugee and Co-founder of Community Development Centre, a refugee non-profit in Uganda that’s establishing what’s been described locally as first of its kind “community-centred radios” in Uganda and his war-raged nation, South Sudan.

As Alison talks to Barnabas, the organization so far runs 4 community-centred radio projects: 2 in Uganda and 2 in South Sudan distributing over 600 speaker boxes known as mp3 players targeting 10,000 direct beneficiaries from both countries.

Excerpts:

Thank you Barnabas for your time. Could you begin by introducingyourself?

You’re welcome. I’m called Barnabas Samuel, the Development Programmes Manager for Community Development Centre; CDC. We are a community-concern refugee-led organization which is operating in Arua, Terego, Ma’di Okolo, Koboko and Yumbe Districts here in West Nile region in Uganda. Our mission is basically to work for welfare of communities and poverty alleviation. In areas where we have been working, we have been helping the most vulnerable people, the communities that are under-resourced and underrepresented, and particularly in Bidibidi, Lobule, and Rhino camp. Our work provides empowerment but also create platforms for community development. You are one of the co-founders, what motivated you people to start a non-profit organization that has also focusonmediawork?

We started in 2014. In our roots, we started as more of community media project known as “Roro lo Kak” (in South Sudan’s native Kakwa language) meaning voice of the land. We were working to build understanding among the diversity of communities which settled in Yei River County, South Sudan.And our tool was simply community-centred media. In your last statement, you talked of community-centred media,whatisitexactly?

In simple, Community-centred media is media made local. When we talk of community-centred media some people think it’s more of media campaign like special messages being designed for specific communities. But it is what brings people together to contribute, listen, to discuss and to take action that help them overcome their local challenges. It is what I say media made local because it means any person can learn to do it.When people are up to listen to others, when people are up to recognizing their strengths and power of their stories, they do so by teaming up and establishing their own media. With community media, it brings together community members, service providers and media organizations to collaborate not only in planning and developing activities but also in creating media content for the audience. Another key thing about community-centred media is that soft programmes such as media programmes are linked with the offline or physical activities such as community events, training such that they will be able to take in immediate action. So the on-air activities of the radio inspire and reinforce the off-air activities of the community. In our work, particularly, we are using audio content that is a podcast.They are distributed through memory cards to listening groups in which they listen to the programme in their speaker boxes or MP3 players. The programmes that we have include local talkshow, dramas, local news, CSAs (community service announcements), community music and dialogues. I think a radio station can also be a community-centred radio, that means, it’s a community-centred media if it uses such an approach, and this happens when actually the community is genuinely involved in the planning and creation of content in that radio.

You said “community-media is media made local”, perhaps what kind of community-centred media projects areyoucurrentlyrunning?

In Uganda, we are implementing a community-focused media project called Soot Semee (in simple Arabic) meaning Good voice of compassion in Omugo refugee camp in the Northern part of the country Whereas in Lobule and Bidibidi refugee settlement, that is in Koboko and Yumbe district, we have Voices A-Z media project. All these projects use the community-centred approach. And if you go to South Sudan, we have the Hope Village and the Studio Salaam. The Studio Salaam is in Yei River County, and covers some parts of Lainya. But then Hope Village is basically in Lainya County

These are the 4 media projects we have. The content for this projects are produced in the popular languages spoken by the listening communities. Like in Uganda, we have our programs in simple Arabic, Kakwa, Lugbara and Aringa while in South Sudan, we have them in simpleArabic and bari.

You have 4 media projects, 2 in Uganda and 2 in South Sudan. Who are your target audience for this communitycentredmediaprojects?

Generally in Uganda, our media projects are within and around the refugee settlements. This is because we target mostly the refugees and the host community who live there. With Soot Semee in Rhino camp, we produce the episodes in simple Arabic and Lugbara. However, it is in Kakwa and Aringa for Voices A-Z in Yumbe and Koboko district. In areas where we work, we have local concern issues of refugees who are battling psychosocial challenges including the uncertainty of losing their loved ones, their property and also local difficulties like conflicts over resource sharing in the refugee settlements.Alack to accurate and reliable information, gives way to reliance on wild rumours and misinformation.And all of these things contribute to tension, and also conflicts within the settlement. For example, in Koboko and Yumbe, we have had inter-community conflicts over sharing of scarce natural resources like trees between the refugees and the host community. But for the case our project in South Sudan, we mostly target areas where conflict has hit hard, and communities need this tool most to rebuild their lives. In refugee or rural settings, community-media and the mainstream media such as the local radio stations are serving the same audience.

I understand there are some local radio stations operating in the urban centers, which are not very far away from the settlements. Why the local audience preferred this media approach to the current mainstream media, in this case, theradiostations?

We did a survey in the refugee camp in 2019 before starting this initiative. Our survey indicated that there’s actually very low ownership of radio in the camp. In fact, over 65% of the respondents in the refugee camps said they trust radio as the most preferred means of reliable information to other means such as newspaper, phone. While for those who had radios at the time, they were not contented with the local radio stations. You could see this audience was eager to listen to their own community content which is completely inadequate in the mainstream media. Besides that, there’s a challenge of language barrier. Most of the refugees in the areas where we operate speak simple Arabic and their native languages while the host community uses Lubgara. So there’s a high mismatch in language preferences. Local audience often complains of few local content on local commercial radio stations targeting the refugees. This makes community centred media or CCM a success. We started to pilot this project in Omugo in which it stood till date because the community wants to talk, listen and take action. The good thing with CCM is that we use speaker boxes that give the user more control over the content and number of times they repeatedly want to listen to the members.

I would say CCM promotes great engagement and participation by allowing members of the community to contribute their own stories and perspective, and this solicit feedback and input from the listener. But if you take a look at the mainstream media, is what I call a message-sender or it operates as a one-way communication channel. The media owners, journalists and editors decide on what they want to cover not only that how they want to present it to the community members, and the community is just a listener. It is worse with commercial radio stations that are for-profit. What’s unique about mainstream media that the community-centredmediawillfindithardtomatch?

I think the mainstream media is powerful and is a powerful entity because of the money. It has a lot of influence and money. You can be a community-centred radio like ours.You are focused on training local community members to produce content or to make media, but if the mainstream media exists in the area, they will take over. Because of the influence of money, you find volunteers leave, and want to get jobs in other radio stations where they receive a good pay. It becomes a challenge to community-centred media because you will have to again bear the burden of training new volunteers in the same skills. Otherwise, I see that if the mainstream stations here could do more in bringing community voices on board, I think it would make it easier to uncover the unheard voices. From your words, I get you’re like CCM is closer to the audience all the time, especially when it comes to the level of involvement to participate and ownership. Perhaps, could you reflect on your experience of how it’s impacting communitieswhereyou’redelivering?

Yes, that’s it. We have seen how this media approach played a significant role in empowering local communities. How did it happen? It facilitated knowledge sharing and provided a platform for community members to share stories, skills, knowledge and experiences. Why the community? Community members have information to share.They share a wide range of information. These include topics on farming, business and local conflict resolution. Another important thing is that this media helps to reduce cases of gender based violence within these communities by increasing awareness and equipping individuals to recognize, and address issues of violence. This makes people safer and more peaceful. We have witnessed how it contributes to greater access to information. In places where we have used communitycentred media, it is like an outreach scheme. You find community members are more aware of their community issues and those outside the camp. With community-centred media, where we have speakers managed by the listeners, we celebrate ownership that generates the zeal to participate. I would say it has enabled members make decisions that are well informed and contributes in improving the general health, reduces incidences of diseases. Recently, we had an opportunity to visit Omugo camp where the Soot Semee project has now produced and distributed more than 140 episodes since its start in 2020. From some programme listeners, we heard inspiring personal and community stories. You could hear parents telling us: “Look I wasn’t having enough time to chat with my child at home. But when I listened to the programme about role model men, I started to hold evening meetings at home. Today, my child doesn’t stay outside like before?. While from leaders, they could testify about the drop in theft cases as a result of the facilitation provided by the radio. And I believe, there are many voices untold about the transformation this media is having on the community and its people. I remember during the covid-19, our community media wasn’t affected by lockdown because it was considered by the government as one of the emergency service providers. So the volunteers while keeping the stand operating procedures were allowed to regularly deliver the content to the audience by bike. What I’m saying here is that CCM plays a very important role because it is directly operated, managed and owned by the community members which is not the case with most mainstream radio stations. In South Sudan, where conflict has been devastating the country, reports of crackdown on press freedom are alarming.And besides, you run a community media there, to find out, how do you overcome the media challenges theretoproducemediacontentforthecommunities?

As I mentioned in the beginning, Studio Salaam and Hope Village are community-centered media projects that we are implementing in South Sudan. It is true that media work here is subject to censorship, harassments, intimidations, violence from government and other actors who are also involved in the conflict. But despite these challenges and situations, with community-centred media, it plays very essential role in this context. And how we do that is we try to provide the platform for the communities to voice their concerns and information about conflict and its impact, it is more of peace building.With Studio Salaam just as the name Salaam means peace, we work to promote dialogue, reconciliation and other peace building efforts. But of course the question still needs a very clear point. What we tried as much as possible that we build trust within the local community and other stakeholders such as the government, media organizations. To be honest, it was really difficult from the beginning to see these stakeholders together Due to the conflict, information is sensitive, and the point of who gives information is dictated. So there’s a sense of nervousness. But we tried our best to get the needs and concerns of all the stakeholders, which was very important. This only happen because the approach we use is communitycentred, that we listen to the communities and other stakeholders. We bring them together, and in this process, we plan together with them.And because of building trust with the local community and government, is how we have managed to work in these places.

On matters of ethical guidelines, how to do you manage to keep the regular floor of this content from planning to distribution without causing a harm or breach of local laws?

We train our volunteers so that they have the basic skills and knowledge, and ethics of community journalism.These makes them critical thinkers when it comes to professional handling of data like the content planning, gathering, editing and production to address ethical dilemmas. Another thing we leverage is inclusiveness. Our volunteers are drawn from diverse groups so that bias is minimized. For instance, in Uganda we have volunteers from both the refugees and the natives while in South Sudan, they come from the local community in which its members are the target audience.With the representatives coming from diverse groups, we help prevent issues of bias. In Uganda, the Soot Semee has what we call Council of Reference, which is a community-led governing board for the project.This body helps in monitoring the utilization of their project tools and resources. On content, they also collect the feedbacks, the pressing community issues that the members want content to be produced on. The CCM itself has its guiding principles that guide its operations so that it’s always collaborative and participatory for all. Lastly, we have established protocols to manage conflictsensitive information. Like for example, when we have interviews that community members have raised serious issues of high community concerns, we don’t broadcast their names.This is intended to provide security for the sources.We also follow and observe different protocols to guide our media productions, for example, we also prioritize our volunteers who are working in the media projects. When you work context like this, you need to understand the dynamics, the actors and what their interests are.This way you will be able to make sure that your intervention does not actually cause or exacerbate conflict, but it will rather build more peace. And we do this analysis more often on monthly basis.

If you were to own and run a mainstream radio station, howwouldyouoperateit?

The principle says give the microphone away What does that mean? It emphasizes the active involvement of community members in planning, creation and distribution of content. That means they should be able to conduct research, engage the community to identify issues and the topics that are relevant to them. It is important that i train in-community reporters or volunteers who are given the tools or equipment, to collect the data from the community. Most often, it is clear that with many radios, the microphones are at the station, owned and used by them. This is contrary to CCM. Yet the community members or your target audience need to become members in data collection. They need to be content creators. This makes them your representatives in your community, and I think it is a powerful give back to the community. The other thing is that I would ensure that my station works with local organizations, and make important collaborations. In today’s world, you can’t succeed alone. You need the support of others in order to thrive. So I would really leverage collaborations. From community participation, I think let’s create those platforms or spaces for the community. Those platforms I’m talking of could be community radio shows that is, if it is a radio. If it is a website, let them have community blogs where members can freely express themselves through writing.

By implementing 4 community media initiatives, could mean using more resources to sustain them. How do you manage to ensure that the resources are available to keep themrunning?

I would say if you want to implement a community-centred media project, aim for sustenance from day one. That’s a powerful principle of community-centred media.You have to work together You will have to involve the community from the beginning.You will have to ensure that they are part of the design of the whole media. What kind of media do they want? What kinds of issues they want addressed using the media?

Why do they want it? Do they actually need it? The best example I can give is our Soot Semee project, which is now making 5 years since 2020.When we talk of the 5 years, it still exists with very small support that is provided to sustain it. Why is it still existing for long is because the community has taken local ownership of the project. It is the one mostly running it by having the council of reference, a body that governs it and raises local resources. Once the radio has community volunteers who are well trained, it becomes easy to look for and support with meager resources that keeps it working.This is what makes the project sustainable. It’s more of how the community has owned and involved in the project, but it’s not more of what resources you have or what amount of funding you’ve raised. All these projects we are doing are with thanks toAmplifying Voices, a UK based-charity which is in their mission to get the communities to start talking. So they are community-focused and they provide these small resources so that we get the communities to start talking and taking action.

As you run these projects, you must equally be having somechallengestoo?

Yes, of course. The main challenge is funding. Where you have limited funding this restricts your ability to reach a wider audience. But with this important support from Amplifying Voices, we are continuing to support these communities with the tools and materials that will enable the community sustain their projects. The good thing is that we have empowered volunteers who will keep the community media producing regular audio programmes for their communities. However, we do also experience the challenge of volunteers changing locations which is based on their individual needs or challenges. This factor affects content production and distribution especially in areas where they are few, so this tasks the organization and the council of reference to again finding new representatives to be trained which requires resources.

Whatareyourplans?

In Uganda, our plan is to establish a refugee-led radio station in the settlement that will use the community-centred media approach and also expand in Bidibidi so that we reach more people. But in South Sudan, particularly Yei, we want to also have a radio station to use the same concept.We also intend to move beyond Lainya, by reaching more people this time in Morobo County.

In your final message, what take aways do you offer to African media from community-centred media perspective?

It is important to prioritize the voices from the community. Be open to feedback from the community and so that you improve your work. I would also say it is important to approach your work with a sense of cultural humility, that is, respect for community values. But I would also emphasize that be transparent and accountable.