Community Women Broadcasters’ Master Training Organized from March 06-09,2013 at Sohna,Haryana

Community Women Broadcasters’ Master Training Organized

Building capacities of community women broadcasters and developing leadership skills among them was the theme of the recently concluded CEMCA’s Community Women Broadcasters’ Master Training held at Sohna, Haryana from March 6-9, 2013.

Six community radio stations (CRS) participated in the event – namely, Radio Dhadkan (Shivpuri); Voice of Azamgarh (Azamgarh); CMS Radio (Lucknow); Tashi Delek CRS (Dharamshala); Alfase’Mewat (Mewat) and Radio Mewat (Mewat).  From each CRS, a team of three comprising a station representative and two community women were selected for the training.  Prior participation in community radio was an important consideration in selecting the community women in order to ensure their continued engagement post training.

Through interactive sessions, games and group work, participants explored creative ways of presenting content systematically and effectively to bring about behaviour change. They also gained basic presentation and organisational skills. As post workshop follow-up, CEMCA has entered into individual agreements with each CRS, whereby over the coming four weeks, the participants of the workshop will conduct local workshops to motivate and train ten other women to engage meaningfully with community radio.  Planning for the local workshop, preparing the agenda and practical exercises on conducting thematic sessions formed part of Master training agenda.

One of the high points of the workshop was a visit to Alfas e’Mewat Community Radio Station on International Women’s Day (March 08) to participate in their celebrations. One representative from each CRS also got an opportunity to speak before a large community gathering.

Post workshop feedback   from participants indicates that the workshop has enthused and skilled participants to carry forward the cascade training.  Most of the participants listed providing training assistance as one of their key contribution areas to their CRS. Significantly, few had mentioned this as an area of engagement in the pre workshop feedback. With the exception of one male CRS representative, all participants were women.