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Youth Radio Program - Mullakkam
A community radio station to serve, empower, and inform the predominantly Tamil tea plantation workers' communities in central Sri Lanka.
Description
Plantation youths (who are largely Tamil) are given little or no opportunity to express themselves, or to articulate their needs, and often their lives are limited to the plantation in which they live. As a result they face problems in finding employment outside, in corresponding with government officials in Sinhala, and in participating in higher education.
The initiative, which started in 2005, provides a radio program in Tamil for the plantation community and in particular for the youth. It allows young people a space to have access to information, exposing them to outside sources thus widening their perspective and giving them new approaches to solving conflicts. Further, the initiative supports them with solving their problems and hopes to contribute to the peace building process by giving out unbiased knowledge.
Aims / Objectives
The initiative aims to facilitate access to information important to the Tamil plantation community and give room for their ideas to be heard and the discussion of their problems.
The voice of Tamil plantation community is not satisfactorily taken into account in finding solutions to the ethnic conflict. They are doubly marginalised, living as Tamils among the majority of Sinhalese in the country and being looked down upon by the other Tamils in the country as having lower origins, being from the lower casts and having migrated from India under the British rule. Therefore they need special efforts invested in them to build up their confidence to speak up and claim their rightful place in the peace negotiations. The radio channel provides them with a space that is accessible to the entire community as a forum for dialogue and a way of accessing related information.
How it is Articulated
The presenters of the radio program were selected by a request for applications, applicants were then given personal interviews. Currently there are 3 women and 2 men running the program. They receive monthly capacity building training on topics such as print and electronic media, interviewing, report writing, time management and the art of interviewing. They get to learn the technical aspect of making a radio production as well, including outside studio recordings and live programs. They visit plantations each week to meet the workers and discuss their problems, interview people and prepare programs that are supportive, relevant and important to the plantation community. The initiative also broadcasts job opportunities for young people and provides educational programs such as how to complete documents at different government offices and the language skills needed.
Achievements / Learning Points
The air time allocated for the ‘Mullakam’ radio program has been increasing each year as audience demand increases and along with the realisation of its capacity to make a change. We are working towards starting a separate radio channel for the plantation community encouraged from the response to the initiative. The letters received from the community often describe the positive changes made in plantation workers’ lives because of the information they receive through the radio program, such as putting into practise conflict transformation techniques the programme has broadcast. A listener’s club is currently being organised, indicating its high level of popularity and effectiveness as a social mobilisation strategy.
The radio program in Tamil is an easier and more convenient way to approach the plantation workers and reaches a wider audience than most other mechanisms. As a result it promotes a significant level of awareness of workers rights’ and current situations in the country. Further, the radio program reveals injustices done in the community and often actions are taken immediately afterwards to solve these situations. Having a permanent community radio for the plantation workers would be even more powerful than the limited air time provided under the initiative (the air time is limited as available resources are also, at present, limited). Also making reading material available for the community at the radio station for some of our informative programs such as communicative Sinhala lessons would enable the community to more effectively benefit from the initiative.
Geographical Area of Operation
Funding Resources
FES