by Empowerhouse / Birgitte Jallov

16 women working with community radio to strengthen the voices and lives of women in their area

Kadi Souley Bonkano, Radio FAHAM, Niger

Kadi Souley Bonkano from Niger’s capital city Niamey was a broadcaster on the local community radio Radio Anfani. Kadi worked to develop the women’s radio based on a local women’s association she had founded, called FAHAM. Faham is a word borrowed from Arabic which means understanding. Kadi wants to ensure education and ‘understanding’ – also of women’s perspectives, experiences, dreams and lives through FAHAM.

Faham was created in 2005 as an apolitical, non-denominational and non-profit national association, focusing on ways to ensure equity and greater inclusion of the voices of women living in semi-urban and rural areas. The association soon realised that to achieve their goals, community radio, which Kadi had experience with earlier, would be not only a good way, it became a priority, and FAHAM got a broadcast license for the radio in 2010.

FAHAM had the support of a former MP, who secured free offices in the suburbs of Niamey, and from Kadi’s sister, the station got a computer, a printer and a photocopier which both were used for training and functioned as a small telecentre, allowing the volunteers to have an income while waiting for the installation of the equipment.

FAHAM therefore started training women leaders in the community to become community broadcasters and identified an acute need for a community school, which the association started. It is for children 3-5 years old and financed by the parents, who pay 15 euros per year. With the school in place, it was easier for the community radio volunteers to spend time at the station.

Whereas the school is still in place, the station closed down after heavy rains flooded the association’s office and they had to realise that the location of the offices could not guarantee the stability and safety of the radio that they needed. The broadcasters continued producing programmes that were broadcast on other existing stations. Activities were suspended in 2019 when COVID-19 arrived.

Last year, in 2022, FAHAM started a reorganization of the association and the radio-focus. FAHAM intends to be the 1st web radio in Niger by women and for women, ensuring dialogue for women to share and act together, breaking down constraints on women’s access to media and public spaces.

The station will contribute to strengthening the image of rural women and it intends to reach and impact 25,000 to 30,000 households. so now, again, FAHAM trains women leaders – the future broadcasters to cover the information needs and interests they together have worked to identify.

Read more here: https://empowerhouse.dk/kadi-souley-bonkano/

EMPOWERHOUSE launches its contribution to the 16-day campaign by sharing 16 women’s community radio stories: unfolding how each broadcaster has been seeing positive change for women and girls – working intensely to eliminate violence against women and girls.

by Empowerhouse / Birgitte Jallov

16 women working with community radio to strengthen the voices and lives of women in their area

Kanchan K. Malik, Community Media and Women Researcher, India

Kachan K. Malik (Ph.D) is a university professor at the University of Hyderabad and is a Faculty Fellow with the ‘UNESCO Chair on Community Media’, there, where she unfolds her work in support of community media in India and in South Asia with a particular focus on the importance of having women at the stations in all roles and functions.

Kanchan says she is a researcher, learning from the powerful people building community media where her journeys take her.

For over two and a half decades, Kanchan K. Malik’s academic interests and endeavours have been in Community and Alternative Media; Women and Community Media; Journalism Studies; and Media Ethics. She has worked with national and international research projects and published scholarly papers and chapters on media interventions by non-governmental organisations for empowerment at the grassroots level. Her research has also contributed to policy advocacy efforts for community radio in India.

Read more here: https://empowerhouse.dk/kanchan-k-malik-india/

EMPOWERHOUSE launches its contribution to the 16-day campaign by sharing 16 women’s community radio stories: unfolding how each broadcaster has been seeing positive change for women and girls – working intensely to eliminate violence against women and girls.

by Empowerhouse / Birgitte Jallov

16 women working with community radio to strengthen the voices and lives of women in their area

Caroline is a professor (PhD) of radio, researcher, networker–and beyond and above all–a feminist activist. Since she joined ‘Women’s Airwaves’ in the 1980s, she has worked to turn her professional and social engagement real by strengthening women and women’s voices with a focus on ensuring space, justice and empowerment for and of women.

Fem FM – an 8-day radio licence in 1992 – co-created by Caroline and Trish Caverly, was planned for a year, housed in a borrowed 4-storey building, filled with the 200 women (two hundred women, Caroline insists) who had taken holidays or in other ways made the dream of a lifetime come true: UK’s first all women’s radio station.

Read more here: https://empowerhouse.dk/rose-haji-mwalimu-duplicate-3494…/

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EMPOWERHOUSE lanuches its contribution to the 16-day campaign by sharing 16 women’s community radio stories: unfolding how each broadcaster has been seeing positive change for women and girls – working intensely to eliminate violence against women and girls.

by Empowerhouse / Birgitte Jallov

16 women working with community radio to strengthen the voices and lives of women in their area

Jubiel M. Zulu, Radio Kwietu, Zambia

Jubiel is an award-winning journalist and media and communication specialist. Now working as a District Information Officer in Zambia’s Eastern Province. Jubiel said there is so much basic information that people do not have access to. One example of her work as a District Information Officer (DIO) in Chadiza district is an article where she tells about fistula, a terrible, life-changing condition suffered by no less than 25% of Zambia’s women

Jubiel also worked in Kwithu FM, in the capital Lusaka, for ten years. There, she integrated issues of importance to women and women’s lives in the general programming: political, economic, social, and cultural.

Jubiel has a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication and Public Relations from Cavendishi University, and she is Vice President of the Zambia Institute of Independent Media Alliance, a ZAMWA (Zambia Association of Women in the Media) board member and has won both international and national awards for her journalism.

Read more here: https://empowerhouse.dk/jubiel-m-zulu/

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EMPOWERHOUSE lanuches its contribution to the 16-day campaign by sharing 16 women’s community radio stories: unfolding how each broadcaster has been seeing positive change for women and girls – working intensely to eliminate violence against women and girls.

The International Association of Women Journalists in Radio and Television (IAWRT) – Philippines launched its recent publication entitled “What To Do: A Guide to Understanding Attacks Against Women Journalists” last November 25, 2023 at the UP Hotel, Diliman, Quezon City.

This guide is intended to be used by women journalists in the Philippines to understand and address threats they commonly face. Data and practical tips included in this guide were lifted from training, interviews, and consultations of IAWRT Philippines with experts in the field.

Journalist Lady Ann Salem, who was arrested on International Human Rights Day in 2020 and detained for almost three months, said the manual is a handy and practical guide for her fellow truthtellers as they find themselves in difficult situations.

“These situations are things they used to just report about but now also find themselves in, with the increasing attacks against journalists through traditional means and now also social media and lawfare and the continuing impunity for crimes against them,” Salem said.

Salem, who is also the communications officer of the international board of IAWRT, said that during her arrest, “I saw how the stories I used to write, report or edit happened to me, in a checklist-like fashion. And my mind raced and protested at all my rights that the police violated then but I could not do anything about it because my life was literally in their hands.”

“It was a point that I think all my journalists’ safety trainings reached their limit – for what is a journalist to do amid 20 armed police in your home after they planted guns and explosives and are about to put you in jail. But it was also then that I knew that these safety trainings have helped me a lot up until that point. So innovations like this paralegal manual are always a welcome effort from journalists to give and offer to other journalists,” said Salem.

The manual was written and published as part of the Digital Safe House and Collaboration Platform for Women Journalists in the Philippines project of IAWRT Philippines, through its engagement with the International Media Support.

Limited print copies of the manual will soon be available. To get a digital copy, head on to https://bit.ly/What-To-Do-Digital.