Consultation Workshop on Developing a Continuous Improvement Toolkit for Community Radio Stations, University of Hyderabad, 29-30 March 2013

Consultation Workshop on Developing a Continuous Improvement Toolkit for Community Radio Stations, University of Hyderabad, 29-30 March 2013

New Delhi/ 5/4/2013: The Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) within its mandate of learning for development uses Community Radio (CR) as a means of reaching and engaging with the local communities to empower them, and provide access to learning opportunities. CEMCA has been promoting the establishment and use of CR for the last six years and within its current Three Year Plan (2012-13) is developing a continuous improvement framework for the CR stations. The UNESCO Chair on Community Media at University of Hyderabad is the leading partner in developing the framework/toolkit for CR practitioners to evolve codes of practice and indicators for continuous improvement of the performance of CR covering all aspects of their operations focussing on improvement of quality. The broad goal of this exercise is to develop quality indicators through a participatory process, adopting the ‘Continuous Improvement’ framework. The first consultative workshop was held at University of Hyderabad on 29-30 march 2013, where participants from ten CR stations discussed the framework developed by a team of experts at the University of Hyderabad. The ten CRS represented were Radio Tilonia, Rajasthan; Rudi no Radio, Gujarat; Alfas-e’Mewat, Haryana; Hamara CR, Himachal Pradesh; Radio Namaskar, Orissa; Radio Dhadkan, Madhya Pradesh; Radio Tashi Delak, Himachal Pradesh; Radio Sarang, Karnataka; Hewalvani, Urrarakhand; Sangham Radio, Andhra Pradesh and Bol Hyderabad from University of Hyderabad. Over two days, participants debated over several parameters of good practices that were derived on the basis of a detailed literature review undertaken by the UNESCO Chair on Community Media team. Working in groups, they developed performance indicators for parameters on station policies, inclusiveness, and community participation in station management, among others.  These indicators will be further refined after taking them to a wider group of CR practitioners and experts to be held from 25-26 April 2013.