Local heros make a difference in Pakistan village

By Hazeen Latif

Sahib Gul may be disabled, but his talent for art and music speaks for itself and he is a person who never gives up.  “My name is Sahib Gul, which means king of the roses,” he told a meeting of the newly established ‘New Dawn Community Services’, a community-based organization (CBO) in a village in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.  “I love to sing, it’s my passion,”  he said, as he began to demonstrate his great voice and amazing ability to “beatbox”.  

Sahib Gul is just one of the many community members that has benefited from HCR’s ‘New Dawn’ project, which inspired the local community to register a CBO to help us bring health and development to the village.  “I may be crippled and disabled,” Sahib Gul told me, “but I want to help my community.” 

We have been working in KPK Province since 2014 on a number of projects including micro-enterprise development, a mobile health clinic, radio programming and most recently a new well for clean drinking water.   The well has been so successful that many have stopped going to the local health worker with stomach complaints.  Zahid, who has a clinic nearby, showed me the incoming patients register saying, “Now, fewer patients are coming with gastrointestinal problems.” Sahib Gul has also been feeling much better after using the new bore water.

It’s a privilege to be working in this area, with people who really want to make a difference and take responsibility for their own change.  To me, they are local heroes.  As I met recently with the community for the second monthly meeting to form the CBO, we began to lay plans for next year, to do more to help in the area of health, education and we will be developing FM radio programmes to be a voice for the voiceless.    

Local artist and musician Sahib Gul demonstrates the art of beatboxing

“Better than Nestle's!” - Clean water brings health to Pakistan community

By Jon Hargreaves

“You have lost me my business,” health clinic owner,  Zahid jokingly tells HCR Pakistan director Hazeen Latif.   He was speaking at the opening of the new drinking well in his village, provided by HCR, funded by an Australian church.  “Since this well opened three weeks ago,” Zahid says, “I am selling less Flagyl because fewer people are having stomach problems.”  With a smile on his face he says, “this water is even better than Nestlé's.”  The well project was a result of a consultation facilitated by HCR which identified some of the main needs facing the community. 

Schoolboy tries the clean drinking water from the new well in his village, KPK province, Pakistan

HCR has been working in this village in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province since 2013, helping the community understand and tackle their health and social development challenges.  “It has been such a privilege to walk alongside this community for the last three years and feel like I’m part of them,” says Hazeen.  “During that time we’ve seen some great things happen, like the medical camp that HCR sponsored with a local partner. We also sponsored a community cricket match and have done a micro-enterprise project, "he added,"but perhaps the most difficult time was when a nearby school was attacked by terrorists and I experienced the grief the community was going through."

HCR has been working in Pakistan in development and disaster response since 2013, with a vision of seeing whole of life transformation in some of the most challenging places in the country.

Well-digging in KPK, Pakistan is very manual (Video)

The Yalgoo Emu Cup

By Celeste Larkins

We have just arrived back from attending our second Yalgoo Emu Cup. Last year the sun was shining, so much so that one of the Radio MAMA staff members got heatstroke. There was definitely no heat stroke this year! We arrived to rains and a freezing cold wind, but that didn’t stop the community from having fun. Children were playing in the paddle pools (I shiver just thinking about it), jumping on bouncy castles, making their emu costumes and getting involved in the organised games. One community member said “The rain is good, it brings us all closer together, not just in terms of distance”.

When the storm hit, the whole community was huddled together underneath cover, except for some children who embraced the rain. Dane and I helped Radio MAMA do a live broadcast from the Emu Cup. We chatted on-air with lots of children, a well-known Indigenous hip hop artist, Bryte MC, as well as lots of community members including a gentleman who came to Australia from Chile as a political refugee 30 years ago! Even though the fireworks had to be cancelled, it was still a great event. Dane and I love how we are able to involve community people to be part of radio.

Barry from Radio MAMA, and Celeste broadcasting at the Yalgoo Emu Cup.

The highlight of the day was the stunning headline act, The Merindas, an Indigenous R&B soul group who sing a lot of motown hits, but have also just released an original song. They make their own costumes and are genuine down to earth people. Even though they were exhausted from a whole week of work-shopping with children from Geraldton and Yalgoo, they agreed to meet me on Sunday morning at 8am, so I could interview them about how they got to where they are today. The recorded interviews will be broadcast on the show I host on Radio MAMA, On the Road, which uses music and yarning to connect the Mid West and Gascoyne. If you ever want to tune in you can by selecting ‘Listen Live Geraldton’ at http://www.mama.net.au/. The show is on each Monday at 11am.

Celeste with the very beautiful and talented Merindas!

* Yalgoo is a town in the Murchison region, 499 kilometres north-north-east of Perth, Western Australia. 

Mental Health Week

This year Mental Health Week was from 8th-15th of October. During the week communities hold programs and events to raise awareness of mental health, with a focus on suicide prevention. Suicide is a leading cause of death for males and females aged between 15 to 44 in Australia (ABS, 2008). Almost eight Australians take their own lives every day (ABS, 2016). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are twice as likely to die by suicide (ABS, 2015).

Our HCR team, Dane Waters and Celeste Larkins, based in Geraldton, travel to communities in the Mid West, Murchison and Gascoyne and support the community to address local issues through community media. They know too well that mental health and suicide prevention is a main issue in all the communities they work, particularly for Aboriginal people.

Along with the continuing work HCR do to raise awareness of mental health and suicide prevention in rural and remote WA, in the lead up for Mental Health Week, Dane and Celeste assisted the local Geraldton suicide prevention working group to develop community service announcements (CSAs). These were broadcast through Radio MAMA and Meeka FM.

HCR also supported an event held in Geraldton, and were part of an outside broadcast put on by Radio MAMA. Community members and service providers participated in the broadcast. This ensured information not only reached Geraldton, but also Mullewa, Meekatharra and Carnarvon.

If you want more information on mental health visit: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/ or see your local GP.

Dane in the middle recording the Drumbeat circle. Drumbeat is a program that can be used as part of therapy for someone with a mental health illness.

How HCR helped Gorbachev achieve glasnost in the USSR

We’ve been looking through HCR’s archives and have asked our founder, Dr Ross James, to explain the story behind some of the photos. 

By Ross James

By 1989, Russia’s leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev had orchestrated a reorientation of Soviet strategic aims that contributed to the end of the Cold War and brought in an era of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The Russians withdrew from Afghanistan, Communist regimes in Eastern and Central Europe were defeated in elections, and the East German Government opened the Berlin Wall. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) officially ceased to exist on 31 December 1991.

In these tumultuous years I was living and working in Pakistan and was part of a small team that travelled to Russia to support a group of people who wanted to broadcast radio programs responding to a vacuum of family, spiritual and social values in a country that was collapsing. Crime, corruption, alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty, hunger and unemployment now besieged a despairing people who had been denied freedom of expression, religion and individual empowerment for decades.

I have many memories of that time: of when we ate radish for breakfast because of the scarcity of fresh food but fed a starving cat scavenging beneath the tables of a dilapidated café a bowl of caviar because it was so plentiful; of not just one but many old women sitting on a footpath, pathetic in their attempts to sell a pair of used shoes or two tomatoes. But nothing will erase the memory of working with that first generation of broadcasters no longer coerced into thinking and behaving according to the collective ideology that had shaped their entire existence and which was now crumbling to pieces around them.

One of our sessions was in the training room of a radio station with powerful transmitters for jamming political and religious broadcasts from outside of the Soviet Union. Those transmitters were now silent, no longer churning out annoying and disruptive signals on the same frequencies as foreign broadcasts intended for Soviet audiences. But ideological apparatus remained around the radio facility: statues of Marx, Lenin, Stalin. In our training room, large portraits featuring their stern images looked down on us, as we developed a suite of communication strategies and radio programs that, over the next few years, had much positive impact on the lives of listeners. Let alone not having the opportunity to voice their concerns about family and social issues before, none of our group had any broadcasting experience.

In this photo, a translator is helping me to work through a programmer’s proposals during a mentoring session on a launch on the Amur River that flows through Khabarovsk, 30 kilometres from the Chinese border in Siberia.

The HCR family comes together for the first time ever!

HCR Australia was founded in 1993 by Dr Ross James who has extensive knowledge in communication for development. Since then, HCR entities have been established in United Kingdom and Pakistan. Each HCR entity works together towards the common goal of supporting marginalised communities through community-centred media.

In the last week of August, for the first time the HCR trans-national network came together for an intensive week of planning to see how we can support more communities in need. It was a productive time of discussion, and although we were all exhausted by the end of the week, we were all assured by the work HCR is doing in remote Western Australia, Pakistan, Philippines and countries in Africa to support the transformation of communities.

There is a lot more work to be done, but we are all very excited to see the future of HCR.

From Left to Right: Celeste Larkins and Dane Waters (AU), Hazeen Latif (PAK), Jon Hargreaves (UK), Alex Stout (UK), Ross and Jill James (AU), Kit Ng (AU), David and Jan Bayliss (AU), Alex Williams (UK Board).

A water resource management student gets involved in...radio!

MSc Student, Joseph Thompson has just completed writing up his research which he conducted at HCR's partner project, Tana FM in Eastern Kenya during June and July.  A student of water resource management at Wageningen (Holland) and Copenhagen (Denmark) Universities, Joe’s research addressed the conflict over resources in the region and particularly how the radio station, Tana FM, is playing a role in building peace by promoting dialogue, sharing knowledge and engaging all sides in the conflict.  

During his time in Tana River, Joe worked closely with producers to make radio programmes to tackle some of the key themes that emerged during the research process which helped different tribes to better understand each other.  In one programme on tribalism for example, participants in the programme took turns in teaching a proverb in their mother tongue to a person from another tribe, explaining the meaning of the proverb.  Needless to say this resulted in a lot of laughter and a kind of “humanising” of the other side.  Involving the wider community in the programmes promotes dialogue and understanding, a key HCR principle.

Joseph with Tana FM producers Zeinab Hussein and Galana Galole

A talented bunch...?

In the Mid West, HCR works primarily with community radio stations and partners who rely on community radio for communication support. HCR has had dealings with the community radio broadcast sector over a number of years because we greatly support the role of community-run radio stations, such as the Mid West Aboriginal Media Association (Radio MAMA). Stations such as these are an important cultural and social asset in regional and remote areas. And so we are happy to offer our support to the sector in another way. Our own Ross James has been appointed to the assessor pool of the Community Broadcast Foundation. The assessors voluntarily commit some time to independently consider and provide advice on grant applications from community radio stations. Thanks go to Radio MAMA for sponsoring Ross in his appointment as their representative.

(Cheeky note from Editor: The CBF announcement stated, “This talented bunch will start in their new roles on 1 July”. We note they didn’t mention Ross hee hee).

Peace centre for Kenya's troubled Tana River

HCR and Canadian-based Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention, are about to set up a "Peace Centre" in the conflicted east Kenyan region of Tana Delta.   The centre will be established in the town of Garsen and will serve as a hub to analyse misinformation and rumours, as well as disseminate reliable information and messages that promote peace through HCR partner station Tana FM.  Kenya’s eastern Tana River County has frequently been affected by violent conflict between different ethnic groups, with rumours and misinformation among the key drivers of the conflict. 

In April, HCR specialists joined Tana FM producers in training a team of citizen journalists from Sentinel's Una Hakika project in how to create radio programme content that builds peace.  Una Hakika project coordinator John Green praised the new venture saying:  “People make decisions based on information, so when they receive information that is verified and from a neutral source that has no ethnic bias, it is a milestone in the peace process”

A new team of Una Hakika citizen journalists with coleagues from Tana FM and HCR UK in Garsen

Sentinel's Executive Director, Christopher Tuckwood said that when the Una Hakika information service was set up two years ago, his team were deeply impacted by the interethnic massacres in late 2012 and early 2013 and how rumours had contributed to the atmosphere of fear, distrust and hatred that fuelled the conflict.   

Una Hakika's expertise in gathering, verifying and countering the flow of misinformation will add a powerful dimension to Tana FM's broadcasts as together the teams seek to put an end to conflict in this often divided region.

HCR's Jon Hargreaves described the establishment of this new partnership as coming at a very strategic time, as Kenyan's prepare to go to the polls in August 2017.  "Elections in Kenya have often been associated with violence," said Jon, "and even this week we saw a bloody crackdown on protests in Nairobi, following demonstrations against the country's electoral commission. We want to do all we can to ensure that elections in Tana River County pass peacefully and that citizens of the county are fully aware of their rights and responsibilities."

Tana FM began test broadcasts from Hola, Capital of Tana River County in May 2015

10th Anniversary for Syban program

The tenth anniversary for Syban program was on the 11th of May. Syban Radio program was launched in Pakistan by Feba Pakistan in 2006 as a response to the devastating Muzaffarabad earthquake in late 2005, where 80 000 died and an estimated 4 million others left homeless.  Various government agencies in Pakistan had asked HCR to help them respond to the earthquake at the same time Feba Pakistan was looking at FM radio involvement. The program led to an ongoing expansion of programs into FM broadcasting stations in other cities in partnership with local churches. HCR is currently evaluating transformative outcomes of the expansion program.

When Ross was in Pakistan in April/May the team began planning for tenth anniversary celebrations, asking the community what they thought of the Syban radio program.

ISMAIL (regular listener of SYBAN)

Greetings my name is ISMAIL. I live in UPPER CHATTER MUZZAFARABAD. I have been listening pro SYBAN for last five years continuously. In SYBAN most significant topics are discussed for their solution. It is very good program. On the accomplishment of 10 years of SYBAN I say congratulation. I listen to it eagerly, you should also listen. It is my voice, thanks.

AMEER UL DIN MUGHAL (JOURNALIST from SAMHA NEWS)

Greetings I am AMIR UL DIN MUGHAL. I am doing work in AZAD JAMU & KASHMIR, as a representative of SAMHA TELEVSION channel. Apart from it I am also working on my website. So far as Program SYBAN is concerned, it is very good Program, I have been invited in it many time for giving my services to the community. It is very good program. SYBAN is working on education, health, and other social issues very effectively. On the HAPPY 10th anniversary of SYBAN, I say congratulation with the best wishes that may it keep on working effectively for removing social evils and we become a developed country one day. Thanks!

RJ UMAIR (VOK FM105)

Hello I am RJ UMAIR here; I have been working with VOCIE OF KASHMIR FM 105, for eight years. So far as SYBAN Program is concerned, since the time of earth quake in MUZZAFARABAD by helping the effected of the earthquake, to on word SYBAN team very effectively working on education, health, and other social issues.  ON the eve of 10TH ANNVARSARY of SYBAN I say congratulation to all SYBAN`s team with my best wishes thanks.

NADEEM AHMED AWAN (PWD person with disability, and chairman of SAHARA WELFARE COMMITTEE)

Click link below to see his video response. 

It’s National Youth Week, so why should we celebrate the youth of this nation?

By Celeste Larkins

The youth of Australia are important to society and its functioning. They are our next generation of tradespeople, teachers, doctors and lawyers, so they need our support. The years of youth can be a time of struggle, dealing with family issues or friends, as well as pressures to ‘fit in’ at weekend booze parties. Then there are schooling pressures and the looming question of ‘What will I do with my life?’. Most of us probably remember this awkward stage in our lives.

If we believe the portrayal of the news headlines youth are all drug-taking, alcohol-abusing, party-crashing, stealing, abusive and disrespectful. Really?

Last week, I was with a group of female teenagers who are disengaged from school. They are part of a program that tries to motivate students to learn in ways that are more relevant to their situation.

The youth coordinator from the Geraldton Regional Aboriginal Medical Service (GRAMS) asked me to help the girls develop radio messages promoting the GRAMS youth day, a fun day for youth to access services appropriate to their needs.

Initially, we had concerns that the teenagers wouldn’t be interested in designing radio messages, especially as it was the last week of school and we had limited time. But the teenagers couldn’t contain themselves with excitement. Some were shy but everyone made sure that all were involved in the message development process. It was lovely to see these young people looking out for one another.

As we went around helping each group, they shared with us their ideas and took on board any suggestions we made. After recording, they all were proud of themselves, especially those who were shy and struggled initially, and eager to hear the messages broadcast. Afterwards, their teacher told us that she was amazed at what the girls did in the hour and how engaged they were in the activity.

These young people were polite and respectful, eager to be involved in developing messages promoting the GRAMS youth day to their peers. We hope we get a chance to do more of these workshops with the teenagers.

If ever you wonder what is to become of the next generation, remember those who are trying to help themselves and their peers develop into compassionate people. Celebrate our youth. They give so much back to all of us. And, on a final note, just to let you know, it wasn’t so long ago that I was a teenager, which I am pretty chuffed about!

Watch the video below with the messages that the group developed:

A new voice of hope in DR Congo

In eastern DR Congo's conflicted province of North Kivu, HCR has been working with partners to establish a new community radio station, Umoja (Unity) FM.  One of the architects of the project is Member of Parliament Albert Baliesima Kadukima who has great hopes for this station....

A vision better than sight guides Wahid.

 

Our story begins in October 2005, when a magnitude 7.6 earthquake changed Pakistan-administered Azad Jammu Kashmir forever. The quake shook a mountainous region around Muzaffarabad, a city 100 kilometres northeast of Islamabad, at the foothills of the Himalaya mountains. At least 86,000 people were killed, more than 69,000 injured.

Not far from the epicentre of the earthquake is the village of Chalabandi, which was virtually swept away by a massive landslide. The only way out for any survivors in Chalabandi and nearby villages  was across the mud and rubble of the landslide. A road of sorts led to a landing pad for helicopters. Volunteers brought in food, medicine, blankets and tents for survivors but many aid workers refused to go to Chalabandi for fear of looters.

Wahid lived in Chalabandi with his mum, dad and two younger siblings, a sister and brother. As with many school children, both siblings did not survive when their school building crumbled and collapsed, such was the violence of the earthquake. Wahid’s terror was shaped by something affecting no other; the 10 year old had become blind in his first year of birth through a medical condition that could not be treated because of a lack of medical services.

It’s now 2016. The last 11 years have been difficult, Wahid admits. Rebuilding their lives has been slow. An uncle has helped them to restore their demolished house. Wajid’s father has found poorly-paid work as a security guard in a nearby school. The noise, confusion and uncertainty of the earthquake is not a distant memory for Wahid has a daily reminder: his mother continues to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, so great was the impact of the earthquake on her.

But Wahid has a vision. With education as a priority, he studies humanities and arts subjects at an institute that specialises in educating people who live with disabilities. Dedication and commitment is necessary: the institute is about four hours travel from Chalabandi on local transport. Each week, for the past few years, he has made the journey to attend classes and tutorials.

Wahid has had to learn to deal with the torments of unsympathetic people. “People,” he said, “injured my feelings by laughing at me. They did not help me, but just made me a source of their humour.“

One day he heard Syban (Shelter) a community development radio program broadcast on a local radio station by an HCR partner. A guest was talking about the rights of people living with disabilities (PWDs) and how they can lead a productive life like anyone without disabilities. Inspired, Wahid contacted the radio program with an offer to tell his story of pursuing an education despite being blind. All he wanted was for people to change their attitude toward PWDs: to accept them, to support them. His words were passionate and, unusually for someone speaking on the radio in Pakistan, very direct in his appeal. “Although I have a disability I have the vision and the courage to live like normal people. I want to be a part of changing our community. All of you listeners could have a child or family member, just like me, who becomes disabled through no fault of their own. I am a member of this community so please consider me, and those like me, human beings!’’

The story doesn’t end there.

Syban is dedicated to empowering people to tell their stories and contribute to discussion and social learning. Wahid’s appearance led him to being asked to join an advisory group for a local disability NGO and to counsel other PWDs. Not only that, the NGO now provides Wahid dedicated transport for his journey from Chalabandi to his college in the distant town.

Syban has received praise from the community for its efforts to support people with disabilities.

More importantly, Wahid has become a part of the Syban radio program. He has attended workshops to learn radio programming skills, and there are plans for him to become a Syban reporter on disability issues.

Wahid may be blind, but he has a vision. Syban is using HCR’s community-centred strategies to empower Wahid, and others like him, to contribute to the transformation of their community.

The irony of Charsadda attack

By Ross James

When attackers stormed the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, northwest Pakistan on Wednesday, 20 January 2016, they exposed a great irony.

Twenty one people, not including four men killed by security forces, died. Among those dead are 17 students and a lecturer who shot back at the gunmen with his pistol, to allow his students to flee, before he was killed by a gunman. The assault ended after hours of intense fighting, when security forces cornered the attackers into two university buildings, killing them before they could explode their suicide vests.

It is ironic that the university is named after a Pashtun nationalist leader who believed in non-violent struggle against the British raj and was a friend of Mohandas Ghandi.

It is ironic that the attack comes at a time when Pakistan’s political and military forces attempt to counter terrorism. “We don’t want to be known as a terrorist state”, a lecturer in political studies at the Foundation University in Rawalpindi told me just a few months ago. The Pakistan Taliban had finally seemed to be weakened, but commentators worry that, even if diminished, the remaining terrorists have retained their capacity for brutality.

Protesters after the attack Source: Dunya News, Death Toll in Bacha Khan University attack rises to 21, 2016 from http://dunyanews.tv/en/Pakistan/318761-Death-toll-in-Bacha-Khan-University-attack-rises-t

It is ironic that the attack seems to have exposed a rift in the Taliban with a high-level spokesman denying the Islamist group carried out the attack, shortly after a prominent Pakistan Taliban commander claimed responsibility.

And it is ironic that that the attack took place not far from a community-driven peace-building project that HCR is assisting with advice and training. Community leaders reported their relatives working or studying at the university were safe. The community-driven initiative is aiming to overcome deeply-entrenched ethnic and religious tensions with activities to improve health, increase social capital, reduce inter-communal fighting, promote small business and empower the communities with community-centred radio programming that they design and present. Director of HCR Pakistan, Mr Hazeen, says, “although the project has only been going for two years, we are seeing transformation, and community leaders are very supportive of the project and the aims. Despite the efforts by terrorists to impose their extremist ideology, people are tired of the fighting and its negative impact on their families, communities and quality of life. Together, the community and HCR are doing good.”

For news coverage and photographs:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35359072

http://dunyanews.tv/en/Pakistan/318761-Death-toll-in-Bacha-Khan-University-attack-rises-t

A Critical year for Tana FM in the run up to Kenya's elections

With recent warnings from Kenya's electoral commission that a rise in ethnically charged “hate speech” threatens Kenya's elections in 2017, the team at HCR partner station, Tana FM, know they have an important role - to promote peace.  Elections in the past have led to violence, particularly in Tana River County.  Next month,  some 22.4 million people will register to vote in the 2017 poll, far more than the 14.4 million who registered for the 2013 election.  Reporter Alex Williams provides an update on Tana FM's progress following it's launch last year.