News
IPDC projects resonate with their beneficiaries
As the 61st bureau meeting of the gets underway on 21 March, an analytical summary of projects funded by the programme last year shows how the projects have supported the growth of community broadcasting while broadening the scope for advocacy for the safety of journalists in several countries.
The , available online, discloses that over 120 volunteers in Jamaica, Palestine, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Malawi, Lesotho, Dominican Republic and Bangladesh benefited from support for community broadcasting, including through training, equipment, networking and advocacy.
In Swaziland, Somalia and Kazakhstan, over 50 media practitioners and owners benefited from training opportunities on the safety of journalists, while in St. Lucia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Madagascar and Nepal, over 215 people participated in various activities aimed at supporting media law and policy reforms.
While cataloguing a series of other project outputs across the IPDC鈥檚 priorities on media assessments and capacity-building in Mexico, Suriname, Haiti, Rwanda, Kenya, Somalia, Cuba, Jamaica, Uganda, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Malaysia, Oman, Swaziland and Sri Lanka, the report draws out several lessons for future implementation.
The first lesson is about innovative ways of addressing the inadequacy of resources by collaborating with other organizations and NGOs to supplement the budget.
The second lesson is the need to make project objectives as modest as possible, especially where influencing complex social and political processes is concerned.
The third lesson revolves around the continued use of and appreciation for the IPDC鈥檚 normative instruments. For example, in the course of the research carried out to implement one project in Argentina, beneficiaries relied upon the UNESCO's Media Viability Indicators 鈥渘ot in direct application but as inputs to trigger the analysis and reflections of the (community radio) stations themselves 鈥︹
The report is prepared annually is part of the IPDC鈥檚 efforts to enhance knowledge-driven media development as a larger process towards helping with the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
