If one envisions putting up a radio station in Ethiopia, one would probably think of soldering, lots of wires and training. This was also our idea when we went to Ethiopia, one year ago. And at last, we've reached that point. At this moment we are training sixty volunteers from the community in different aspects of radio.
It's not that meetings aren't important, nor that the work for the past year has been dull, but we now finally really get to work with our target group: the people from the Jimma Community, who are enthusiastic about radio, about creating their own medium, to tell and to listen to their own stories.
Unfortunately, we haven't been able to employ new journalists or a manager yet, which means that our technician, Ghezeghne, is currently working seven days a week to do the broadcasts. Between the programs he also trains the volunteers. Ghezeghne proves himself to be a great technician, and one can see that he used to be a teacher before.
There are now three subgroups to be trained: technicians, afaan oromo journalists and amharic journalists. The first group finished their training on audio editing and mobile recording and are momentarily working on their assignments, which brings a lot of life to the radio station. All the computers our now being used for a large part of the day and the newsroom is starting to get that chaotic feel; nice.