Empower...

Empower: make (someone) stronger and more confident, especially in controlling their life and claiming their rights.

Empowerment has often been used as a “buzz” word in the health promotion/community development sector. While there is considerable discourse (which I won’t explore extensively in this post) as to whether this is a process of giving power, or whether it’s equipping the power the person already has, the end goal is people becoming stronger and more confident to make changes or take actions to improve the own health and the health of their community. Community media is a powerful tool to make this process happen. 

I was recently training a group of community development students about how community media can be a tool to help build stronger and healthier communities. It’s always rewarding seeing new people engage with media for the first time. It usually starts with hesitancy and nervousness about being recorded, however, after support they usually agree with “I’ll give it a go, but please don’t actually use it on radio.” Once recorded we show how the content can help the community, with participants usually saying, “wow that’s a very powerful piece of audio. You can use it because I want to help my community."

This group chose to produce a radio message about mental health because they saw it as the most important issue that they want to address in their community. To me seeing that journey over just one hour reminds me how powerful community media can be and to me that’s empowerment.

We want to empower more people to use community media to build healthier communities.

Closing the Gap

By Dane Waters

In Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience significant differences in health indicators when compared to non-Indigenous people. This “gap” has driven focus under the “Closing the Gap” program to ensure that all Australians experience equality in health and life expectancy by 2031. We at HCR want to see all people flourish and live long and healthy lives which is why we are so passionate about walking alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and organisations to help close this gap. Community media can be an important tool to raise Aboriginal* voices and why we are training and supporting Aboriginal organisations to help drive positive changes to ensure all experience equality in health. The latest “report card” has shown some progress, however, clearly shows we still have a way to go to reach equality. Life expectancy is often used as a measure that people are enjoying long and healthy lives. In July 2022, nationally, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are expected to live to 71.6 years for males (whereas 80.2 years for non-Indigenous males) and female 75.6 years (83.4 years for non-Indigenous females). This gap has improved since 2005-2007 when the gap was 11.4 years for males (now 8.6 years) and females were 9.6 years (now 7.8 years), however, we are not closing the gap fast enough. We are encouraged by the national dialogue about closing the gap faster and keen to continue to support positive change from the grass roots through community media. 

For more about the latest on Closing the Gap, see the annual data report:

https://www.pc.gov.au/closing-the-gap-data/annual-data-report/report/closing-the-gap-annual-data-compilation-report-july2022.pdf

*we use Aboriginal as we have been advised it is the preferred term for our local partners in the Mid West, Western Australia, but acknowledge this includes all Aboriginal and Torre Strait Islander people.

World Maternal Mental Health Day

By Celeste Larkins

With the support of the Statewide Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Program, we have recently been working with local Geraldton parents who are expecting or who have a new baby to share their experience to help other parents, particularly at the moment as services are limited due to COVID-19. The project, which was launched on World Maternal Mental Health Day (May 4th) supported parents to record video and audio messages for broadcast on Facebook and local community Aboriginal radio station, Radio MAMA. They aim to help Geraldton parents identify self-care strategies, know where they can access help and reduce the stigma associated with mental illness as a new parent. With the support of local stakeholders, the project is continuing to include more local parents and service providers as well.  

Local Geraldton mum, Chelsea, with her 12 week old baby, who was involved in the project.

The importance of time

By Dane Waters

Community media has shown to be a powerful tool to help build communities, as it enables communities to talk, listen and then develop strategies to take action to build healthier communities. This is why we are so passionate about training communities to use community media in their own community. An important reminder though is that the underlying foundations of any community development strategy is built on relationships and trust. 

I was reminded of this recently, when a community service asked me to attend a workshop and assist with producing community media product to support a mental health project. While it had been a particularly busy time with many deadlines, I committed as we always try to say yes, and the task should have only taken 20-30 minutes. On arrival all training participants were hesitant and did not want to be involved, so instead I became involved in the workshop and spent time building relationships with those there. As the afternoon progressed all the participants felt it was a worthy project and then participated in developing community media messages to help the community with mental health. Even though it then took 2.5 hours, it was definitely worth it.

Giving time is key to building relationships which is foundational to community development.