The manuals:

O Meu Primeiro passo (My First Steps in Community Radio Production)

Manual Administrativo (Administrative Manual – on basic procedures and healthy routines)

Manual de Pesquisa para Rádios Comunitárias.  (Research and Impact Assessment for Community Radio)

Integracão e formacão de produtores de programas em Rádio Comunitária (Integrating and training new programme producers into a community radio – also on construction of community editorial groups)

Producão de Programas  (Programme Production)

Manual Temático Grupo Editorial de Agricultura (Content development within specific themes – Example: Agriculture)

Producão de Programas "Educacão Cívica Eleitoral" (Election Coverage in a Community Radio)

Manual Técnico de Edicão Digital para Rádios Comunitárias (Digital Editing for Community Radio)

 T H E   C R   M A N U A L S

Manuals for training is central when working to develop a group of community radios: Manuals that can be used for bigger, well prepared formal training courses, for small informal training situations, for self study and manuals that can be used as hand books in the everyday of the community radio. 

In a community radio most of the program producers are working on a volunteer basis, which means on the one hand that training is important, as most of the producers have never worked with communication or media before; and on the other, there will always be a certain level of rotation: some volunteers stop and new ones come.  

This is one of the beauties of community radio: over time to have trained and exposed a vast number of community members to the art and techniques of facilitating communication processes with the community and presenting community development issues on radio. And it is one of the challenges: training needs to be ongoing, and at a certain quality level.  

This is why manuals are important, and this importance was also felt by the Media Development Project in Mozambique, The following series of manuals were therefore developed by the staff and consultants working with the project in support of its community radio component: assisting eight communities to start radios and at the same time supporting the growing national community radio movement, counting at the time of closure of the project, no less than 50 community radios and community multimedia centers.  The layout artist is Rogerio Xerinda.

The manuals were all developed in Portuguese, the overall official language of Mozambique. So far no translations have been made into English or other languages, but UNESCO and UNDP responsible for the project, would welcome any such future developments if found useful, as always with adequate acknowledgement of the source. The manuals are here presented with their title in Portuguese and a translation into English in a parenthesis:

• O Meu Primeiro passo (My First Steps in Community Radio Production)
  See English Foreword here
• Manual Administrativo (Administrative Manual – on basic procedures and healthy routines)
• Manual de Pesquisa para Rádios Comunitárias.  (Research and Impact Assessment for Community Radio)
  See English Foreword here
• Integracão e formacão de produtores de programas em Rádio Comunitária (Integrating and training new programme producers into a community radio – also on construction of community editorial groups) 
  See English Foreword here
• Producão de Programas  (Programme Production)
  See English Foreword here
• Manual Temático Grupo Editorial de Agricultura (Content development within specific themes – Example: Agriculture)
  See English Foreword here
• Producão de Programas "Educacão Cívica Eleitoral" (Election Coverage in a Community Radio)
  See English Foreword here
• Manual Técnico de Edicão Digital para Rádios Comunitárias (Digital Editing for Community Radio)
  See English Foreword here
   

The following books were also developed by the project. While not manuals as such, they could be useful as inspiration when working in and with community radio development and training

•   Community Waves / Ondas Comunitárias
•   Community Radio Seminar, Report  (starting a national organisation of Community Radio)
•   Participation by Community Radios in Civic Education and Electoral Coverage. The Experience of the Community Radios in Mozambique's 2003 Local Elections. Specific Cases of: Dondo, Chimoio and Cuamba. /Rádios Comunitárias e Educacão cívica Eleitoral. A Experiência das Rádios Comunitárias nas Eleicões Autárquicas de 2003 em Mocambique.

If planning to conduct community radio training, UNESCO Maputo and FORCOM have copies of the video documentaries produced by the project:

Most of these films are available in both Portuguese and English versions:

• Community Waves - Community Radio Development (2001)

• Listen to the Women - Women in the Media in Mozambique (2002)

• The Challenges of Sustainable Growth - Small Newspapers outside Maputo (2003)

• The Women's Community - on Creation of a Network in Mozambique (2004)

• Establishing FORCOM, Mozambique's Forum of Community Radio Stations. (2005)

• Communities on air - Five years later (2006)

Forewords by

Thomás Vieira Mário, National Project Coordinator and
Birgitte Jallov, Chief Technical Adviser

Production of programmes on Agriculture
within the Editorial Group

Foreword

A community radio is a unique local force for development. It has the fantastic capacity of a mass medium, facilitating that a few people can communicate effectively with many. Once the installation is carried out, and the radio is really on air, the producers can very easily be in instantaneous touch with the listeners - with the community. Any important news can immediately be carried into to the radio receivers of the community.

Besides from these general traits, true for any kind of radio: public national or local radio, commercial radio or special interest radio (religious for instance), the community radio has the rare and special condition of belonging to a very limited group of people: not a country, not a province, but a smaller community, where the basic conditions for life and its challenges are more or less the same.

Within such a community many things are common - but even more things are different for the people living there. We therefore talk about "the communities within the community. Because even though the bad road access to our town and district, the weak services of the hospital, the good or bad quality of the soil are shared conditions, they affect us different. We all make up part both of the bigger, overall community, but also of many smaller, specific interest communities. These are decided by age, level of education, experience, what you do for a living, where you live, your religion, your family situation etc.etc.

This is why UNESCO in Mozambique has chosen to organize the work of the community radio it supports in "editorial groups". These are groups of community programme producers, who produce programmes around one of the many special interests of the community, identified in the initial audience research.

One of the most important such special areas of interest and work is that of the farming community. Most Mozambicans live on the land we farm, which provide us with the food that sustain us, and which we trade for day-to-day necessities. Some of us have been fortunate enough to manage to produce more than we eat, and need to market and sell our produce to earn money to pay for family needs.

Many of us have found ways that are more effective of working in the area of Agriculture, and we need to use the community radios to share these experiences - and to air our difficulties, because maybe through the radio we could find some solutions? We also know that in most countries of the world, farmers believe much more in their fellow farmers and their concrete experiences than they believe in the authorities, who may have limited experience with actually farming the land on a day-to-day basis.

All of this has to guide us in our ways of using the community radio as effectively as possible. We, the community programme producers: farmers and non-farmers alike in the editiorial group, need to identify the situation, the challenges and the successes in the area of farming where we live. We need to see how the radio can be used most effectively to be a true friend and companion - and a community service - to all farmers in our area.

The manual you are holding in your hands right now has been produced to help you do exactly this: step by step find out, together with your editorial group, how to ensure that your community radio becomes the effective tool for social development and change that you and your community wants!

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Foreword

A community radio is a unique tool for empowerment, social development and change. The main reason is that the community radio belongs to a limited group of people, a smaller community, where the basic conditions for life and its challenges are more or less the same, where we know each other, and where recent research shows that we generally really like to live.

Within such a community many things are common - but even more things are different for the people living there. We therefore talk about "the communities within the community". Because even though the bad road access to our town and district, the weak services of the hospital, the good or bad quality of the soil are shared conditions, they affect us differently depending upon our age, level of education, experience, what each of us do for a living, where we live, our religion, our family situation etc.etc.

This is why UNESCO in Mozambique has chosen to organize the work of the community radio it supports in "editorial groups". These groups of community programme producers produce programmes around one of the many special interests of the community, identified in the initial audience research. Usually you will at least find editorial groups on: Health, Agriculture, Culture, Education, Women, Human Rights and Elections, Children, Sports, and History of the Community.

While each editorial group needs to know well the relevant community-aspects of their special area of production responsibility, the tools to turn an idea into a good programme has a lot of general traits: identifying your message, knowing your target group and their socio-cultural interests and belongings and on the basis of this insight, produce an effective community radio programme, which will help you help the community move closer to its development aims and dreams for a better future.

The manual you hold in your hands right now is aimed at guiding you through this process: turning the idea into a script, ensuring that this script effectively reflects the interests and tastes of the target audience, that it does not activate taboos and fears, that the language, the style, sound effects and the music make up an exciting programme, which will keep its listeners alert and attentive.

This special mix of components, your 'programme cocktail' made up by you and your group, will sometimes be really effective - and sometimes less effective. The last part of this manual therefore deals with evaluation: how to you in your editorial group - and within the radio - continue to help each others improve your capacity for community programming: the best way is constructive, collegial evaluation and discussion.

We, UNESCO in Mozambique, hope that this manual will help you ensure that your radio actually manages to not just exist and be on air, but that it helps move and helps develop your community through creative, beautiful, moving, fun, convincing community programmes. Otherwise we are missing out on an incredible opportunity!!!

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Foreword

Community Radio is maybe the single-most important tool for turning ambitions of creating a democracy into practice. To actually take this potential and development challenge serious, a number of prerequisites have to be in place. One of the most important of these is to ensure that the programmes of the radio are responding to the development priorities of a given community. And as a “community” is not necessarily homogenous, with common conditions for and perceptions of life and related problems, it is important to involve all the many different “communities within the community” in the work with development of programmes of the radio. Furthermore it is important to present the programmes in a good way, opening the issues presented for continued community debate, facilitating that the community can work to find its own adequate community solutions.

All of these challenges – and many more – meet the community member, who wishes to get involved in the work of the local community radio, thus participating in the identification of local development needs and solutions. To help guide the new community programmer, the present manual has been produced by the UNDP funded and UNESCO implemented Media Development Project in Mozambique.

This manual has been used as basic reading in the many training courses and thematical seminars organised by UNESCO in cooperation with its national partners in Mozambique. The manual is, however, also meant to be used for self-study in the communities, where new community members every day come to the station, offering some of their time as a community volunteer.

While the manual can be read and studied individually, we strongly recommend that the radio groups new volunteers and guide them through a collective study and discussion of the many different parts of this manual, facilitating the entry into the world of community development step by step.

UNESCO in Mozambique wants to wish every man and every woman, who has decided to dedicate themselves to the important movement of communities working to find their own ways for a better future, all the very best of luck!

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Foreword


A community radio is a unique tool for empowerment, social development and change. The main reason is that the community radio belongs to a limited group of people, a smaller community, where the basic conditions for life and its challenges are more or less the same, where we know each other, and where recent research shows that we generally really like to live.

Looking to such a reality in rural Mozambique, a community owned, operated and maintained radio should not be possible. And we know that it is only so with utmost commitment, care, planning - and some luck. A number of different tools can, however, facilitate the development of a framework where such a difficult sustainability can be obtained.

One of these important sustainability aspects has to do with the staffing of a community radio: paying expensive salaries is simply not an option, nor desirable: we want the radio programmes to be produced by our people, we want the languages and ways of using these to be ours, we want the metaphors and cultural references to come from our history and present reality… so we need to find a way of working with community members, who give their time and special community capacity to the radio on a volunteer basis. Many find it questionable, even sometimes unethical, to call on community members to work without pay. But this is the only way financially possible - and we do it in so many other community development contexts. We all have to give what we have in terms of time and experience to move towards our future dreams.

As a volunteer community programme producer you work on the basis of a contract with the radio, which ensures that you have rights and obligations. You will learn a lot from courses and from daily contact with the colleagues and the equipment - and you will facilitate a unique community service through the radio!

One of the many issues when working with a group of volunteers has to do with effectively managing this group. UNESCO in Mozambique has developed a concept of "Mobiliser", who ensures that the community programmers always are representative of all the communities in the community, who plan for effective introduction of new volunteers into the groups and who coordinate the work of the editorial groups.

Training, inclusion, coaching and support is very important in such a radio, because the groups of community producers by nature is very fluid: while some start in the radio, others stop - sometimes there are too many programmers available, at other times too few. And training is something that never stops. It has to be an ongoing, integral part of the life of a radio.

These are the issues dealt with in this manual. Good luck. It is worth all the effort !!!! It is for you and your children - your community!!!

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Foreword

A community radio is a unique local force for development. It has the fantastic capacity of a mass medium, facilitating that a few people can communicate effectively with many. Once the installation is carried out, and the radio is really on air, the producers can very easily be in instantaneous touch with the listeners - with the community. Any important news can immediately be carried into to the radio receivers of the community.

This, however, does not work if the technical aspects are not taken well care of: It is important that the equipment is adequate for the reality in which it will be used with dust, humidity and possibly a shortage of spare parts. It is important that the equipment is cared well for through effective preventive maintenance routines. And it is important that the equipment it being used in an appropriate way, by community producers and technicians, who have received the training needed to use the equipment in an appropriate way.

Because if the equipment is not working, nothing goes on air.

Besides from these basic considerations when thinking about the use of equipment in a community radio, it is important to choose carefully the technology for the radio in question: should be use the "old fashioned" analogue equipment? Or should we rather go for the new, digital equipment? Do we have repair technicians to help us in these areas? Spare parts? What about preventive maintenance routines? The price of consumables (tapes, CDs etc.)?

Once all of these important assessments and discussions have been taken, and if you have decided to make use of (also) digital technologies, you have to find out how to start working with this new technology, how to use the hard ware - the machine - and the soft ware - the programmes inside. You need to know how to handle difficult situations, how to diagnose problems and to solve (the easiest of ) these.

Once all of this is in place, this new digital technology has fantastic potential for opening the doors to the socalled "knowledge society", where access to information will be as important for our development and well being as what we now consider basic necessities.

The manual you are holding in your hands right now has been produced to help you do exactly this: step by step find out how to start using your new, digital equipment, and how to live well with it - and develop with it. This is the basis for ensuring that your radio becomes the effective tool for social development and change that you and your community wants!

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Foreword

Few practices are so directly linked to the questions of Democracy and Governance as a country’s elections, be they municipal or national. And during these important democratic events, the media are more than ever at the centre of attention, both in terms of getting the coverage for those with a direct interest and involvement in the elections themselves, in terms of being held informed about the election campaign and process, and in terms of measuring the democratic maturity of a country: what is happening, how is it reflected in the media, and what role is the media playing?

Whereas the role of the public media in Mozambique during an electoral process is well defined and described in the national legislation, the role of Community Radio is not. The UNDP funded and UNESCO implemented media development project (“Strengthening Democracy and Governance through Development of the Media in Mozambique”) has therefore, together with other partners in the community radio area - organised in the national “Núcleo de Coordenação” – initiated a process to identify and define how the community radios can best play their role as community promoters of social change.

To define the role of community radio in the electoral process, a national consultative process was initiated in 2002, where all the community radios on air in Mozambique at that time – 37 in all – sent high level representatives to three regional seminars, discussing and defining the role they would prefer to see the radios play in the upcoming municipal and national elections. The result of these seminars was a set of clear recommendations, condensed into “Ten Rules of Conduct for Community Radios during the Election Period” (presented in this manual). This “code” was publicly launched, and the different actors in the “Núcleo de Coordenação” – the state, the Catholic Church and the Community Associations - held seminars with their radio partners to locally launch and present the Code. Furthermore UNESCO coordinated, in collaboration with the national Communication Institute (ICS), a series of regional training courses to ensure effective implementation of the Code.

The present manual was prepared in support of the above mentioned training and implementation process taking place at a given historic moment in Mozambique. And the issues presented, are seen to have a much more general and far-reaching mission in terms of election coverage and the community radio than just the situation in which this process was conceived: these small community media have as their most important “capital” the community’s confidence and reliance on the fact that the radio will continue to reflect the reality of all “communities within the community” impartially and with a view to facilitate the community’s identification of community solutions to their everyday challenges and problems. If the radio betrays this confidence by becoming partial or preoccupied more with overall politics than with the burning community concerns – which is particularly threatening during an election period – then the radio may loose its special “capital”, the community ownership feeling. And what is then left?

It was the above concern that transpired from the national consultative process, and resulted in the decision by the communities and the radios themselves that the role of the community radio during an election period is to inform, to educate and to reflect the community concerns in this relation. “Civic Education” was therefore the definition of the role of the community radio during this election period, and it was agreed to leave the high profile political reporting and election coverage to the well trained journalists at the public radio in the spirit of letting each do what they are best suited to do.

It is our sincere hope and wish that the community radios manage to turn the recommendations of this manual into effective community radio programmes. This could importantly contribute to the national strengthening of both a participatory democracy and effective and good governance practice.

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Foreword
 

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