http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/the-organic-radio/article3943828.ece The organic radio
Sangham Radio, India’s first community radio station, began broadcasting on October 15, 2008. The station is supported by the Deccan Development Society (DDS) and located in Machnoor village in Medak District. Broadcast on 90.4 FM, Sangham Radio goes on air every day from 7 to 9 pm. • The programme addresses agricultural needs of semi-arid regions; education and literacy, both formal and non-formal; public health and hygiene; environmental and ecological issues; biodiversity and food security; gender justice; local/indigenous knowledge systems; and local cultures, with emphasis on the narrative traditions of song and drama. • Regular features include “Mana Oori Pantalu” (Crops of our Village), “Mana Bhasha” (Our Language), “Chavidi Katta” (Village Chaupal), “Yarandla Muchatlu” (literally, the gossip of the sisters-in-law), “Mee Lettarlu” (literally, your letters, but this actually a request segment). •The programme also promotes indigenous herbal medicine in “Darwazala Dawakhana” (Medicine at your Doorstep), discusses the participatory development work being taken up by the collectives in a feature called “Sanghalu”, and offers a bi-weekly children’s feature called “Balanandam”. • The DDS Community Media Trust (CMT), which runs Sangham Radio, is India’s only all-woman media collective at the rural level. Its members come from marginal farming families bordering on the poverty line. Most of them are non-literate. In spite of these handicaps the CMT strives to take the images and voices of rural women to the larger world and to create an alternative media ethos that can be accessed and controlled by local communities.. • CMT’s focus has been rural people, their food and farming, biodiversity, environmental problems and the women’s perspectives that inform all these issues. Its films are now watched all over the world by civil society activists and farmers’ groups. They are translated into English, German, French, Spanish, Swahili, Thai and Bahasa Indonesia. The main Hindu feature in today's Metro Plus Weekend (Hyderabad) on PV Satheesh, founder of DDS, can be found here: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/millet-man/article3943835.ece http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/millet-man/article3943827.ece -- Dr. Vinod Pavarala Professor of Communication & UNESCO Chair on Community Media Sarojini Naidu School of Arts & Communication University of Hyderabad Gachibowli, Hyderabad 500046 Phone: +91-40-23135501/23011553 http://www.commuoh.in/ http://www.uccommedia.in/ http://www.communityradioindia.org/
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