Philippine Community broadcasting: successes despite overwhelming odds
Amplifying the People’s Voices
Amplifying the People’s Voices: The Philippine Community Radio Experience and Challenges, was launched in 2018 and is now available for download.
It narrates almost three-decades of community radio broadcasting in the Philippines, laying down the challenges it faces in one of the most dangerous countries for journalists in the world.
The 72-page book was launchedin Kampala, Uganda, by the IAWRT President, Violet Gonda and the editor and head of the Philippines Chapter Jola Diones-Mamangun in Octiber 2018.
The book chronologically narrates how community radio broadcasting began in the Philippines in the 1990s and looks at the problems it continues to face to this day. It explains how current broadcasting laws in the country make it difficult for low-power radio stations to acquire franchises and licenses from government institutions.
However, IAWRT International treasurer, Jola Diones-Mamangun, said the book is less about the campaign’s problems and more about its successes, despite overwhelming odds.
“We want this book’s readers to realize that whatever successes the community broadcasting movement in the Philippines has achieved, they are due to the communities’ determination to tell their own stories through radio,” Diones-Mamangun said.
“The lesson here is that community radio broadcasting will never happen without the communities themselves.”
AMPLIFYING THE PEOPLE’S VOICES: The Philippine Community Radio Experience and Challenges available online, in our publications