By María Teresa Aveggio, Programme Manager, WACC

Children’s Communication Rights through radio

In two remote localities in Southern Bolivia, a  long time partner of WACC, the Servicio de Capacitación en Radio y Televisión para el Desarrollo (SECRAD) de la Universidad Católica Boliviana “San  Pablo” has recently finished implementing a radio Project with children. With financial support from UNICEF (The United Nations Children's Fund), SECRAD worked with some  74 children in San Lucas and Monteagudo in the Bolivian department of Chuquisaca.  SECRAD personnel undertook the 11 hour road journey several times to work with children and teachers in 11 schools.  In three training events of three days each, SECRAD used communication training as a tool of empowerment as well as a tool that allowed them to learn about their rights as children.  The 74 youngsters and their teacher learned how to produce radio programmes and reflected on what role communication plays in their lives and the life of their community.  Using a mix of theory and practice, the project contributed to the creative development of the children by helping them to produce messages which encouraged awareness raising around children’s human rights while at the same time allowing the children to narrate their own personal stories.

  Por José Luis Soto/ enviado Especial de Wacc-global

Marie Guyrleine Justin, de REFRAKA, miembro de Wacc-Caribe, agradece solidaridad de Wacc-Global por su visita a mi casa que ahora esta en la calle como otros haitianos “A Dios le debo la vida. Nunca pensé que moriría pese a que me cayó el edificio”, porque el Señor tiene algo muy grande para mi”.

PUERTO PRINCIPE,  Haití, 3 de febrero de 2010.- “He sobrevivo del terremoto porque Dios tiene una misión para mí” y a seguida “seguir trabajando con las mujeres y con las radios comunitarias”, ella  Marie Guyrleine Justin, de Rezo Fanm Radyo Kominote Ayisyen (REFRAKA, está viva de milagro. Las oficina de Refraka estaban localizadas en el primer nivel de un edificio de cuatro plantas que se desplomó por completo. Ella quedó debajo de los escombros junto con otra persona que visitaba la oficina.

By José Luis Soto, Member, WACC-Caribe
(translation by Cándida González-López, Vice-Chair, WACC-Caribe)

Port-au-Prince, January 28, 2010: This is the second time I visit Haiti, two weeks after this Caribbean nation was devastated by a 7.1 earthquake. Nevertheless the tragedy did not destroy the will power of the people of Haiti who still exude courage and pride, even if their hearts are wounded. This was my impression during this second contact with the people of Haiti when I crossed the Dominican-Haitian border after a trip of more than 250 kilometers to get to Port-au-Prince.

In a a thoughtful and probably controversial article "Covering Haiti: When the Media Is the Disaster" (January 21, 2010), Rebecca Solnit explores mass media misrepresentations of what goes on in disaster situations.

Providing examples from recent coverage of the tragedy in Haiti, she asks what would you do? "Imagine, reader, that your city is shattered by a disaster. Your home no longer exists, and you spent what cash was in your pockets days ago. Your credit cards are meaningless because there is no longer any power to run credit-card charges. Actually, there are no longer any storekeepers, any banks, any commerce, or much of anything to buy. The economy has ceased to exist..."

She criticises media coverage that is "more concerned with property than with human life" and proposes banishing the word "looting" in such circumstances, because it "incites madness and obscures realities."

For an alternative and provocative take on media responsibility in the face of calamity, this long article deserves widespread reading and reflection.

As the author concludes, "The survivors of a catastrophe deserve our compassion and our understanding of their plight." As communicators, we need to recognise that "we live and die by words and ideas, and it matters desperately that we get them right."

Source: Guernica: A magazine of art & politics

International cinema mourns the loss of a staunch supporter and critic.

Born 26 November 1933 in Peoria, Illinois, USA, Ron Holloway studied at Loyola University Chicago, where he received his BA in Philosophy and MA in Religious Philosophy. Ordained as a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1959, he worked at adult Education Centres, co-founded the National Centre for Film Study in Chicago and served there as Chaplain. He spent his summers in Latin America (in Mexico at the Ivan Illych Institute in Cuernavaca, and tramping through Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela).

Dear Reader,

I am sorry that I am writing a little late, but that is due to the fact that I have had to seek and listen to what extent our Pacific region and our country is involved in the issues that Copenhagen seems to want to settle from afar. First, people do not really care. People of the region are used to being treated as second class human beings and citizens of the world.  The Atomic Bombs were tested in the region despite the cry and the protests people made to stop this.  What happened? Now those people who were close to the testing zone are suffering and counting their days. This is not only happening to the South Pacific but also to the North.

When it comes to climate change, it feels to us a lot like the World weather Forecast; first the news of Europe and down to Africa, aross to Asia, and down to Australia and New Zealand, across to the North America down to Latin America-- the Pacific seems just a huge space with no people and no one who cares.

Climate change is the same as the weather report--the change of climate is affecting the Region. Climate change is real in our region, even in our own countries, few inhabited Islands have been left idle due to the fact that they are being taken over by sea water. There is no more dry land when it is high tide. The Tsunamis are getting more frequent, people are forced to leave the home of their great great grandfathers and have shifted to for a higher and safer ground. Four countries that no longer have higher grounds and safer areas for their people have to face the consequences of the climate change and  risk dying off.

Is this the "do to others what you want to be done to you?"

When the powerful nations made rules we abided by them and changed our way of life; we did so to make the world a better place.

Of course the Pacific will continue to obey and abide by the International laws ,  because we do not have the power to make us better human beings. What would happen if suddenly all countries of high landmass were turned into sea water and our Pacific sea water was to be turned into massive dry land? What would happen to decision making?

Viliami “Bill” Falekaono, Chair, WACC Pacific

 

Por Seferina de la Cruz y José Luis Soto

Quien es Sarah Macharia y cuales son sus funciones en la Asociación Mundial para la Comunicación Cristiana (WACC)? Ingresó a la WACC en abril de 2007. De origen keniata, es una economista política feminista con amplia experiencia laboral en el terreno de género y desarrollo humano.

Triage: Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma will be shown at RCCongress 2010, which takes place April 7-10. The screening and an appearance by James Orbinski are being sponsored by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC).

The documentary film Triage was inspired by Orbinski's 2008 book, An Imperfect Offering, which won the Writer's Trust of Canada's Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and in which he seeks to make sense of his experiences.

Orbinski is the former international president of Médecins Sans Frontières and accepted the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the organization. A full article about him appears in the 4/2009 issue of WACC's international journal Media Development.

Orbinski says: "Stories. We all have stories. Nature does not tell stories, we do. We find ourselves in them, make ourselves in them, choose ourselves in them. If we are the stories we tell ourselves, we had better choose them well. This book is a series of stories. I ask again and again, 'How am I to be, how are we to be in relation to the suffering of others?' It is a question that has preoccupied me for much of my life."

Triage follows Orbinski to Somalia, Rwanda and Congo and captures the conscience-haunting choices doctors must make as they race against time with limited resources.

See RCC2010's web site for complete programming information and book now!