National workshop on Community Radio Continuous improvement toolkit in Dhaka, Bangladesh, November 25-27,2013
Dhaka; 30/11/2013: The Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia in collaboration with Bangladesh NGO’s Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC) organised an advanced level 3-day national workshop on Community Radio Continuous Improvement Toolkit (CR-CIT) at IDB Bhaban, Dhaka aiming to improve and strengthen the internal governance of Community Radio stations in Bangladesh on 25 -27 November, 2013.
With a request from the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), the Toolkit has been initially developed by UNESCO Chair on Community Media (UCCM) at the University of Hyderabad for India to allow community radio stations to periodically assess themselves on their performance and provides for indicators of performance in the nine basic parameters. These parameters are: content generation and programming; policies and guidelines; volunteers; technology – access and management; on-air standards of broadcast; governance; feedback and grievances; content sharing and networking; revenue generation and financial accountability. The main objective of this workshop was to adopt the Toolkit developed by UCCM for the community radio stations of Bangladesh. The Toolkit has been translated into Bengali by BNNRC.
A total of 32 senior level staffs of all the Community Radio stations attended the training workshop from all over the country. Professor Vinod Pavarala and his team members Dr Vasuki Belavadi, Dr Kanchan K Mallik and Ms Preeti of the UCCM facilitated the workshop to validate and customize the Toolkit in relevance to the context of Bangladesh with the inputs from the community radio practitioners in this workshop. The Bengladeshi version of the Toolkit has been developed and finalised followed by field testing of two community radio stations located near national capital - Dhaka.
Ms. Reba Rani Saha, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Information, Govt. of Bangladesh, Mr. Kazi Akhtar Uddin Ahmed, Additional Secretary and Director General, Bangladesh Betar, Mr.Rafiqul Alam, Chairman, BNNRC Board of Trustee, renowned radio experts Mr. Kamal Ahmed and Faruq Faisal, Mr. AHM Bazlur Rahman, CEO of BNNRC, Dr. Shameem Reza, Associate Professor in Mass Communication of Dhaka University and Dr. Ankuran Dutta, Programme Officer, Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia, New Delhi participated in the workshop and shared their ideas to develop the Toolkit in context of Bangladesh.
The Chief Information Commissioner of Bangladesh Ambassador (Rtd.) Mohammed Farooq graced the valedictory session of the workshop as the Chief Guest on 27 November, 2013. All the participants representing all functional community radio stations of Bangladesh thanked CEMCA, BNNRC and UCCM for developing a continuous improvement Toolkit for the community radio stations.
