Capacity Building for the Community Radio
Sector in South Africa (Project Details)
Ungana-Afrika provided ICT
capacity building and support services to a number of community radio
stations in South Africa by utilising the eRiding model
Service and Program Area:
Regional Support Hub
Status: Completed (Nov
2003 - Aug 2006)
Contact Person: Tshepo Thlaku
Supporters: Open
Society Foundation of South Africa (OSF-SA)
Partners: National
Community Radio Forum (NCRF)
Ungana-Afrika has been working with the
South African Community
Radio sector since 2003. Initially it was contracted by Open Society
Foundation of South Africa (OSF-SA) to provide technology assessment
and planning for 5 provincial hub stations (stations that oversee
provincial activities). The objective was to build new strategies at a
provincial level while researching more localized needs within
individual provinces and their diverse station networks.
In 2005, building off these provincial hub
planning efforts,
Ungana-Afrika implemented a more focused, province-specific project
that provided ICT capacity building and support services to another 5
community radio stations within the Mpumalanga Province. The project
recruited a local young person, who understood the environment and
dynamics of communities of the province, and trained her to be an
eRider (multi-skilled technology consultant). The objectives of the 15
months project were to develop and implement technology plans for the
stations, promote new ICT tools for revenue generation, ensure
eReadiness for external coordination concepts and provide ICT training
for staff and volunteers of the stations. Unlike so many consulting
services the project was focused at transferring skills and encourage
ownership of technology developments within the stations. Community
Radio stations operate within a media-rich environment that still serve
as a critical sources of information to the majority of South Africans
who are poor and excluded from the digital age.
Detailed Project Information
Background - Provincial Hub Technology
Planning
In 2003 Ungana-Afrika, in partnership with
the National Community
Radio Forum (NCRF) and the support of OSF-SA, conducted a technology
assessment project of five provincial hub stations South Africa. These
"hubs" act as normal community radios, but also serve as provincial CR
leaders, helping oversee and coordinate a number of individual stations
within each province. The objective of this 2003-2004 technology
planning effort was to build new strategies at a provincial level while
researching more localized needs within individual provinces and their
diverse station networks.
The outcomes of the assessment revealed that
numerous ICT
opportunities are neglected or overlooked by both community radio
stations and their supporters. This suggested that technology tools are
not integrated effectively into stations’ strategies, and
many
communication and operational benefits of Information and Communication
Technologies (ICTs) become “lost opportunities.”
As a result of the findings of this
assessment project,
Ungana-Afrika proposed ongoing support targeted not only at these hubs,
but individual stations within each province.
Implementation of Targeted Mapumalanga
Activities
Continued support plans were approved by
OSF-SA in 2005 to provide
ICT capacity building and support services, utilizing a non-profit ICT
consultancy model called eRiding, to five additional stations, all
within the Mapumalanga province and CR network. These stations
included: Kangala Community Radio Services, Mutse Community Radio
Station, Greate Middelburg FM, Bushbuckridge Radio and Barberton
Community Radio. An eRider is a multi-disciplined technology consultant
working on-the-ground with a group of non-profit organisations. eRiders
provide non-profits with services that helps them to effectively
integrate ICT into their strategy, and empower them to better achieve
their missions. For more information about the eRiding model visit www.eRiders.net
The project started with technology planning
process that is a
crucial starting point often overlooked in many support interventions.
The process involved a wide assessment of technology skills, to
identify training needs of each staff member, and of available
infrastructure and how it is used on daily basis. Then a technology
team that constitutes staff members from different departments was
formed to take ownership of developments and sustainability of
technology efforts within the station. The team then looked at current
gaps and future strategic goals of the station and agreed a list of
cross-cutting needs for their particular station. Solutions for these
needs were then prioritised and documented into a strategic technology
plan. The plans were eventually used by the eRider to tailor a needs
based support approach for each of the stations.
Noticeable challenges faced by the
stations
Like in many other non-profits common
challenges found in the stations included:
- Underutilisation of available yet
limited technology resources mainly due to lack of basic skills and
knowledge
- Manual documentation of important
information such as news read on-air daily that often got lost
- Lack of maintenance of equipment due to
lack of capacity and
the high support costs, often stations had to hire technicians from
urban areas as far as 250km
- No back-up and virus protection systems
in place
Results of the intervention
After technology planning the larger part of
the project was spent
towards improving the capacity of the station and the following
interventions were achieved:
- One-on-one training of over 55 staff
members across all
stations in basic computing, office productivity software, emailing,
internet applications, broadcasting applications, accounting
applications. This also helped the stations to establish structured
filling and proper documentation
- Workshops on concepts such as Free/Libre
and Open Source
Software (FLOSS) and how can community radio take advantage of the
internet and email communications
- Developing ICT usage and sharing
policies customized to each
station. Everyone within each station was involved so that they
understood the importance and relevance of the policies
- Creating back-up procedures and running
regular back-ups of important data
- Creating technology survival guide that
contained
troubleshooting guide and manual of all the software applications used
in the station
The eRider model is tailored to address
network specific issues and
opportunities to encourage sharing of resources and replicating best
practices among the organisations within the network. This project was
able to achieve this by mobilising a bulk sms service provider for all
the stations, where the each station was able to generate revenue and
improve lister participation in various programs. Another network
related example was that after introducing digital archiving system,
one of the stations successfully installed the system, which eventually
encourage others to replicate the installation in other stations. This
helped the stations to meet their license conditions as required by the
Independent Broadcasting Corporation that each station should regularly
archive their broadcasts, stations could easily submit that data in a
CD format. It was also exciting to see the stations taking advantage of
mailing list to share news from their respective communities which
increased their content and relevance of news to listeners.
In order to ensure that there is there some
sense of
sustainability of efforts that will remain with the stations the eRider
identified technology champion within the station to transferred as
much knowledge as possible and encouraged internal knowledge sharing.
A successful project, determined the
evaluation
After a year of implementation the project
was evaluated by an
independent consultant commissioned by OSF-SA. The results of the
evaluation confirmed that the project made a significant impact on how
the beneficiary community radio station viewed and utilised technology
in their operation. The evaluation also revealed that the technology
plans were comprehensive and somewhat complicated for the literacy
level of staff members in stations, furthermore that in some stations
the plans were underutilised while in others staff members took pride
of constantly referring to them particularly when purchasing new
equipment. More significantly the evaluation found that roughly 65% of
key technology objectives of the stations had already been achieved,
which proved the importance of the support model. User friendly
technology plans were subsequently developed and further training was
provided to the stations.
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