Radio initiative for flood victims

A unique radio project is helping thousands of flood victims in Mozambique to rebuild their lives after the worst floods in living memory earlier this year devastated large parts of the country. The Rapid Radio Response Project is aimed at providing people in flood-affected areas with access to timely and relevant information. The project is run by Media Action International - a Geneva based non-governmental organisation, with the assistance of the British government’s Department for International Development (DFID), The Freeplay Foundation and the United Methodist Church. Ib Schou from Media Action International in Maputo told IRIN that the project grew out of the realisation by aid workers and the Mozambican government during the crisis that a way had to be found to get crucial information to people which they could easily understand. “One of the big problems during the floods was that the information came too late, was inaccurate and that people didn’t believe the information they got,” Schou said. He said that early on in the project it was decided that conventional forms of communication would not work. Although radio was the ideal medium, an alternative to expensive battery-operated sets had to be found. The technological solution was portable wind-up radios. With a few minutes of cranking on a wind-up mechanism, they can be used day or night without batteries. The radios are manufactured by Freeplay Energy Group in Cape Town, South Africa. “So far an estimated 7,500 radios have been distributed for communal listening within communities. The radios are distributed by national and international non-governmental organisations such as Caritas, UNICEF, Action Aid and World Relief,” Schou said. The broadcasts are beamed from Maputo by Radio Mozambique, and are also relayed by two local radio stations in the hardest-hit Gaza and Maputo provinces. “A daily programme is broadcast and developed with Radio Mozambique. It is in the local Xangana language spoken by people mainly in the southern part of Mozambique, where the flooding was the worst. The programme focuses on needs-based information in that we try to ensure that is timely, precise and accurate,” Schou said. The programmes chief editor Almedia Magaia said that apart from providing the flood victims with news and current affairs, educational programmes are also broadcast in the form of drama or by health experts talking on issues such as malaria and cholera, and what to do and where to go for help. People are also given information about land distribution, HIV/AIDS, distribution of food and landmines. The broadcasts started on 2 May and will last for six months. “We hope that at the end the flood survivors will recover their dignity,” Magaia said. An estimated 700,000 people were affected by the February/March floods with an estimated 300,000 displaced. The ministry of agriculture estimates that up to 30 percent of cultivated land was affected - two-thirds of it in the southern half of the country. “The programmes are also helping to facilitate local debates by local people on how they can build their own future, on their own and not top down. People have a need for discussing issues as they are placed in new settlements, meeting new neighbours,” Schou said. “People are finding that through hearing the stories of others’ their own experience is reflected. It is a cathartic process since the memories and trauma suffered by the victims of the floods will take time to heal.”