Testimonials: What Partners Say
In honour of our 25th anniversary, we asked partners to write a few words about the significance of the Network to their work. Here are some of the responses we received from Cameroon, Brazil, Honduras, Mali, Haiti, Nigeria, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Philippines, Ghana and South Africa.
Cameroon
Since I joined the network in the 1980s the DCFRN has grown bigger and bigger. You cannot imagine how much listeners to our programmes have benefited as they keep thanking us for patiently answering their questions. We keep telling them that the answers we get in most cases are from the DCFRN.
When rural radio first saw the light in Cameroon in 1996, I had the heavy responsibility of conceiving and creating the first rural radio station, which began to broadcast on July 15, 1997: Radio Rurale Lolodorf , in the south of the country.
Lacking reference material dealing with development radio programming, I had the good luck, while researching for potential partners, of running into the address of DCFRN, and from that moment my array of programs was enormously enriched, both in topics and in relevant content, which makes the net difference between classical radio and rural radio for development.
As a whole, all the proposed topics were good, and I simply needed to pick the best fits for the socioeconomic and geographic context of our area of coverage.
We have made efforts to adapt and translate the numerous scripts that we have received in the different packages, and it must be highlighted that our work has been made a lot easier thanks to the work done upstream.
In addition, we have been able to easily take advantage of the numerous articles published in DCFRN’s bulletin.
Undoubtedly, other rural radio stations in the country, to which we have transmitted the Network’s coordinates, must have benefited from the same advantages.
Cameroon, which counts with more than 30 local rural radio stations grouped together in a network called RER Cameroon, and more than 30 others awaiting, needs partners like DCFRN more than ever, in order to win the bet on development, which is our primary mission.
LONG LIFE TO DCFRN, for the survival of RURAL RADIO
Brazil
Happy Birthday to the Red Rural! You do a terrific job, and may you all continue in health and happiness for many many years.
How to tell you what you are to us? Well, when we first arrived in this isolated rural area we spent a lot of time thinking about how new ideas and techniques could be introduced into an area where most people didn't have very much formal education and most people didn't feel very comfortable with the written word.
So we thought of what an important part radio programs had played in educating people about important issues. We thought about that British radio show The Archers and how it had been started during World War 2 to help people figure out how to grow their own food, and how, sixty something years later it was still going strong. So we thought that maybe we'd try to write a local version of The Archers – but that would require first putting it into Portuguese and then putting it into the local version of Portuguese and making it culturally appropriate and we didn't think we could manage that. And then one day, when I was sitting on a plane traveling across the Atlantic, I saw something about DCFRN and I thought it must be too good to be true. But of course, it wasn't.
I think the important thing for us was joining a network. Not feeling isolated out in the back of beyond. So we started by using your scripts on the local radio station. We adapted them for our informal training sessions in the community. (It isn't hard to adapt from Spanish to Portuguese.) Then one thing led to another, we helped to establish a new county which meant that we started getting federal funding for schools and health and roads and electricity. Then we started a non profit which focuses on biodiversity conservation and sustainable development (www.iracambi.com).
We work in four areas; forest restoration, medicinal plants, GIS mapping for land use, and community engagement; environmental education, farmer's outreach, community projects and the like. We have built up a library of scripts and we use them on the community radio, in the community newspaper, in our environmental education and outreach programs. We try to involve local kids and youth particularly on the radio. If a family knows that little José is going to speak they'll stay tuned in all day long...
Things have changed a lot since we started work, fifteen years ago. Most of the kids are in school nowadays, the health care has improved, the roads are better – even in the rainy season. But the principal change has been in the way people think. They've emerged from the shadow of military dictatorships, they have flexed their muscles as citizens, they have acquired a new self confidence, and nothing is going to hold them back.
And it's thanks to you and to our other partners, volunteers, and friends from across the world. Together we're changing things one community at a time.
Honduras
I have been receiving your materials since the 1980s. The topics are very useful for the daily program that I coordinate at Radio America, entitled "Honduras Agropecuaria" which has country-wide coverage. Your materials are equally useful as a basis for the articles that I publish on Saturdays, in the supplement La Tribuna Agropecuaria from national newspaper La Tribuna.
I always appreciate your contact and would like to congratulate all the members of the network in its 25th anniversary and, as for you, please receive my best wishes, big hugs and special congratulations.
Mali
Radio Fanakan is part of a rural confederation named Dembagnouma, which groups together 15 rural communities. The confederation meets quarterly. It is at these meetings where we discuss the choices of program themes for the following three months. The idea is to help the community to make more pragmatic and objective choices. We always refer to the topics that you propose in your bulletin. This is a model based on sharing, where peasant farmers talk to each other and discuss together the same problems that concern all.
Bravo.
Haiti
The Agricultural Development Organisation for the Promotion of Haitian Peasant Farmers (OADEPROPAH Haiti) encourages the network to send information for all peasant farmers and professionals of the rural world. All the information supplied by the Network makes up almost an entire professional textbook in project management and problem solving for the rural environment.
Keep the good work, and congratulations to the Network
Nigeria
From 1999 when I joined DCFRN, my understandings of style and approach to farm broadcasting have been widened and deepened. My professional colleagues and I have been exposed to vast information resource and ideas from different backgrounds and locations across the globe. The content and values of our programming have been facilitated and or enhanced with unwavering inspirations from Farm Radio Network.
We have moved closer to the audience to whom we broadcast and have actively monitored our set targets on the farms. Before long a "Network Hour" is planned for the phone-in show with live comments on Network material. Rural listeners without access to phone lines can write in their contributions. If I knew where to obtain funding I would have loved to publish these scripts for farmers groups, students, extension workers, broadcasters, and schools drama clubs. I have every reason to wish DCFRN at 25 many more blissful years ahead because they provide education and information tailored for the right audience through the right medium of mass communication.
Argentina
We would like to comment that we have been receiving your bulletin, punctually and without interruptions, almost from the beginning. We have used it in our printed media, newspaper "Periódico Acción," and its supplement "Cosas prácticas," in pamphlets on health and agroecology and also in our radio media. In general, we work by using the criteria and focus, and rewriting the scripts according to our regional culture. We have produced series of canned radio programs to be broadcast by different radio stations in the region, classifying your packages by topic. We find your materials really useful, especially when the information is supplemented with explanatory drawings in addition to the scripts.
Congratulations in your first 25 years, from us and also in the name of all popular sectors from the Argentinian North!!
Zimbabwe
We have found the Farm Radio Network to be very educative and informative, especially the series on caring for children in rural communities .Even if the scripts are produced far from here they are very relevant to our situation in Zimbabwe if not the rest of Africa. They are written in simple language which is easy to translate.
Philippines
I would like to let you know that I am using the DCFRN scripts in my farm program. I am introducing to our farmers all the information which is appropriate to our own setting. I am using them as they are written but are translated in our dialect. I have also re-written some, most especially those plugs on farming methods/techniques and health information. They are re-written to suit our kind of audience here (using our Cebuano dialect, the language of our audience).
As I've said, the materials that you sent us are very usable and informative. We hope to receive more of them very often most especially on livelihood information. Thank you so much for your continued support to us! More power and God bless!
Ghana
Farm Radio (in its newsletter and scripts) has played a very big and positive role in my farming and my work as a civil society "builder". In my work I deliver information on farming systems, farming techniques and on new crops to rural women farmers. The scripts I get from FarmRadio are not only on farming but also on Health, Nutrition, Conflict Resolution and Capacity building for poor people. I can go on and on to extol the virtues of FarmRadio. Keep on the good work.
South Africa
ABC Ulwazi, the education and development radio production house in South Africa, wishes the Farm Radio Network all the best on its 25th anniversary.
We always look forward to the material that you send us, and we always find items to use "as is" or to adapt for programmes on health and agricultural issues. These scripts and information enhance our programmes and make ourwork more worthwhile. Please keep it up!
