While the dutch (and the doors) are waiting for the sun, Ethiopia is waiting for the rain. Rain is a sign of fertility. When it rains, things will turn out well. That is why the Ethiopians have a saying that when it rains at the beginning of a project or a relationship, it will give it fertile soil to grow on.
Usually the rainy season in this area will start in February. But up 'till now it has been dry and hot. People in the south of Ethiopia are dying and also in the evergreen Jimma dust is taking over.
We have been waiting for the license the last months as hopeful and disparate as the farmers have been waiting for the rain. And yesterday was the day that would give us clarity.
Yesterday the Ethiopian Broadcasting Authority (EBA) came to Jimma to assess the work done. They wanted to talk to 500-800 members of the community, to the board, the president of the Jimma University, the mayor and the employees of the radio station and get some last documents. This would be the final step to get the broadcasting license that we have been working for for 7 months now.
After a stressful week of preparation in which we sometimes thought that everything would end up in one big disaster, everything seemed to be organized.
We invited about 2000 people on Saturday morning 8:30 in the biggest meeting hall in Jimma. We expected that from these 2000, 500-800 would come. But they didn't. Al least, nut until 10:00 when we where very very nervous.
At that time the hall was stuffed with people. Young, old, male, female, rich, poor, handicapped, yes even the deaf inhabitants of Jimma came to fight for community radio!
A lot of speeches by higher officials followed. After that it was the turn of the community to talk. And they did talk. They told them EBA how much they needed the radio station for social en economical change but also just for the fact that they needed a medium that was not controlled by the government. A medium that was their own. They complained about the time it was taking to get the license. And told them they wanted the license NOW. The EBA seemed to be amazed a bit shocked but also impressed.
They said a lot in response that we didn' t understand because it was all in Amharic. But one thing we did understand: 102.0 FM.
Jimare 102.0 FM!
There was a big applause.
Last night heavy rains started.
02 April 2008
19 March 2008
Organizing a community radio station: The Employees
It's not essential for a community radio station to have employees, but it is necessary to have people who are committed to the bone. And since 80% of the community radios have seiced to exist within two years we thought it was important to have some stable factors in the radio station. We just employed three of them: two journalists and one technician. We thought a lot on how we would employ them, since the radio station has no money yet. But the Jimma University, who is helping this project a lot, was ready to pay for their salaries. Of course we thought a long time about this because the university is a semi-government institution, and since this is the first community radio station, it could be sensitive. But together we came up with a construction in which the independence of the station would be guarded, the JU will sponsor us monthly and the board allocates the money to he salaries.
After announcing the vacancies hundreds of people applied not only to be employed as a journalist or a technician, but also to serve the station as a volunteer. In cooperation with a group of experts, we selected the best journalists and technicians. To be sure that the process went as clean as a whistle we first conducted a test on them, the persons that past the test were interviewed. All the people of the employment committee could fill in points on different characteristics and in the end all the points were added. The problem was that the women underperformed, so our equality principle kind of backfired on us. Now we hope we can take a female intern, since a workplace without women is not a good example for a radio station which claims to work on women empowerment.
It's not essential for a community radio station to have employees, but it is necessary to have people who are committed to the bone. And since 80% of the community radios have seiced to exist within two years we thought it was important to have some stable factors in the radio station. We just employed three of them: two journalists and one technician. We thought a lot on how we would employ them, since the radio station has no money yet. But the Jimma University, who is helping this project a lot, was ready to pay for their salaries. Of course we thought a long time about this because the university is a semi-government institution, and since this is the first community radio station, it could be sensitive. But together we came up with a construction in which the independence of the station would be guarded, the JU will sponsor us monthly and the board allocates the money to he salaries.
After announcing the vacancies hundreds of people applied not only to be employed as a journalist or a technician, but also to serve the station as a volunteer. In cooperation with a group of experts, we selected the best journalists and technicians. To be sure that the process went as clean as a whistle we first conducted a test on them, the persons that past the test were interviewed. All the people of the employment committee could fill in points on different characteristics and in the end all the points were added. The problem was that the women underperformed, so our equality principle kind of backfired on us. Now we hope we can take a female intern, since a workplace without women is not a good example for a radio station which claims to work on women empowerment.
Organizing a community radio station: The Board
A community radio is owned and organized by the community, but it's hard to have a meeting with the whole community at the same time. You can try, but probably you will have a problem to even hear yourself talking. That is why the Jimma community decided that the community would choose a general assembly to represent them. The general assembly voted for by 25.000 people, and this general assembly voted, a from amongst themselves, a board. Luckily, the board exists of a lot of different people, from different religions, different sexes, from different areas, and from different social economic backgrounds. So the varied community of Jimma is well represented. The problem is, these ten people also find it sometimes hard to agree. Therefore the board members have long discussions and a lot of meetings that are sometimes very difficult. But now we see that they seem to grow more in their roles every meeting. They get more focused on their communal goal instead of their individual differences. By getting this to work in the board, we also hope to encourage such discussion and understanding of common ground in the community at large.
A community radio is owned and organized by the community, but it's hard to have a meeting with the whole community at the same time. You can try, but probably you will have a problem to even hear yourself talking. That is why the Jimma community decided that the community would choose a general assembly to represent them. The general assembly voted for by 25.000 people, and this general assembly voted, a from amongst themselves, a board. Luckily, the board exists of a lot of different people, from different religions, different sexes, from different areas, and from different social economic backgrounds. So the varied community of Jimma is well represented. The problem is, these ten people also find it sometimes hard to agree. Therefore the board members have long discussions and a lot of meetings that are sometimes very difficult. But now we see that they seem to grow more in their roles every meeting. They get more focused on their communal goal instead of their individual differences. By getting this to work in the board, we also hope to encourage such discussion and understanding of common ground in the community at large.
Free and Open-Source Software for Free Radio III: Radio Automation
One could argue if radio automation is necessary for a community radio station, but at least one could say that it is functional to have if you want to professionalize more. Radio automation used to be a process controlled by a huge machine, but now it's only a piece of software. It takes care of the news, advertisements and 'stations calls' automatically
on given times, every hour or when you push the button. It's also used to play out music or programs in the times that there are no people in the studio. What is nice about this is that news is repeated until 'new news' is produced, advertisements are played out as often a promised and when there was a power failure, the radio will be back online in no-time. Radio
automation is available under Linux. Campcaster and Rivendell both offer an integrated radio automation program for radio station. Campcaster is more suitable for smaller radio stations and Rivendell is capable of very complicated and advanced actions. Campcaster is also widely used by community radio stations in Kenya and is based on 'playlists'. You can select playlists to be played every hour, every half hour or between every other playlist. You can also play a playlist in a playlist, this means that you can make an item which someone made as a playlist part of your program. It's really easy and has a nice interface. Another bonus is that you use it from your webbrowser, if the server is connected to the internet you can organize your program even from abroad! Only internet connectivity is necessary for this option.
www.campware.org
www.rivendellaudio.org
One could argue if radio automation is necessary for a community radio station, but at least one could say that it is functional to have if you want to professionalize more. Radio automation used to be a process controlled by a huge machine, but now it's only a piece of software. It takes care of the news, advertisements and 'stations calls' automatically
on given times, every hour or when you push the button. It's also used to play out music or programs in the times that there are no people in the studio. What is nice about this is that news is repeated until 'new news' is produced, advertisements are played out as often a promised and when there was a power failure, the radio will be back online in no-time. Radio
automation is available under Linux. Campcaster and Rivendell both offer an integrated radio automation program for radio station. Campcaster is more suitable for smaller radio stations and Rivendell is capable of very complicated and advanced actions. Campcaster is also widely used by community radio stations in Kenya and is based on 'playlists'. You can select playlists to be played every hour, every half hour or between every other playlist. You can also play a playlist in a playlist, this means that you can make an item which someone made as a playlist part of your program. It's really easy and has a nice interface. Another bonus is that you use it from your webbrowser, if the server is connected to the internet you can organize your program even from abroad! Only internet connectivity is necessary for this option.
www.campware.org
www.rivendellaudio.org
Free and Open-Source Software for Free Radio II: Audio Editing
In our last post we already mentioned the cost-effective reasons to use Linux and FOSS. But we haven't really given much attention to the quality of the audio editing programs. There is a big choice in Ubuntu and if you want to find the program of your choice, you'll just have to try a lot.
There a few key player: audacity is a cross-platform program, so you could also use it under Mac OSx or Windows. It's really easy to use it is a good introduction to sound editing. If you are used to Pro Tools, this is your alternative. It's a really nice program with a lot of bells and whistles, that's why it's maybe not so suitable for new users. So we chose to install both these programs, one for the beginner and one for the more advanced producer.
www.ardour.org
www.audacity.sourceforge.org
In our last post we already mentioned the cost-effective reasons to use Linux and FOSS. But we haven't really given much attention to the quality of the audio editing programs. There is a big choice in Ubuntu and if you want to find the program of your choice, you'll just have to try a lot.
There a few key player: audacity is a cross-platform program, so you could also use it under Mac OSx or Windows. It's really easy to use it is a good introduction to sound editing. If you are used to Pro Tools, this is your alternative. It's a really nice program with a lot of bells and whistles, that's why it's maybe not so suitable for new users. So we chose to install both these programs, one for the beginner and one for the more advanced producer.
www.ardour.org
www.audacity.sourceforge.org
Free and Open-Source Software for Free Radio I: Operating System
There are a few things that you can say about a community radio stations in general. They are poor and always short of technical staff. What has this got to do with Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS)? The answer is: a lot. FOSS is not only free as in 'freedom' or 'free-speech', a essential part of community radio, but it is also free as in 'free beer'. No expensive licenses have to be bought, no upgrades have to be paid, and one doesn't have to work with crappy, illegal copies, so for this problem, FOSS seem to be a good alternative for community radio. But then the next problem, the lack of technical staff: everyone thinks FOSS is difficult to operate. People know mostly the operating system Linux and think of the scary command prompt. But Linux has changed over the years with the free online distribution of Ubuntu Linux (see: Ubuntu.com). The interface is really nice and 'feels' a lot like working on a Macintosh (interface is the part of a computer program that you see and with which you interact).
There are also other Ubuntu flavours with different interfaces, so is the the XFCE interface for slow PC's (Xubuntu), and KDE interface which look a bit more like windows (Kubuntu). Especially for lower education and the 'one pc per child' project Edubuntu was developed with interface and programs directed at young children.
So Linux seem to have changed into a good alternative for Mac and Windows, but it has another option which is very useful for beginning user environments: permissions. When you login with your username and password you are granted certain permissions. A normal user has access to his/her own directory and programs which are assigned to him/her. He/she has no option to delete system files or change system settings. The only place where this user can do harm is in his/her own directory!
Another important reason for us to use Linux is that is not affected by viruses, even if viruses are opened from an attachment.
These were our reason to look at Ubuntu, in the next post we'll reveal the broad horizons FOSS opens for audio editing and radio automation.
www.ubuntu.org
www.gnu.org
There are a few things that you can say about a community radio stations in general. They are poor and always short of technical staff. What has this got to do with Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS)? The answer is: a lot. FOSS is not only free as in 'freedom' or 'free-speech', a essential part of community radio, but it is also free as in 'free beer'. No expensive licenses have to be bought, no upgrades have to be paid, and one doesn't have to work with crappy, illegal copies, so for this problem, FOSS seem to be a good alternative for community radio. But then the next problem, the lack of technical staff: everyone thinks FOSS is difficult to operate. People know mostly the operating system Linux and think of the scary command prompt. But Linux has changed over the years with the free online distribution of Ubuntu Linux (see: Ubuntu.com). The interface is really nice and 'feels' a lot like working on a Macintosh (interface is the part of a computer program that you see and with which you interact).
There are also other Ubuntu flavours with different interfaces, so is the the XFCE interface for slow PC's (Xubuntu), and KDE interface which look a bit more like windows (Kubuntu). Especially for lower education and the 'one pc per child' project Edubuntu was developed with interface and programs directed at young children.
So Linux seem to have changed into a good alternative for Mac and Windows, but it has another option which is very useful for beginning user environments: permissions. When you login with your username and password you are granted certain permissions. A normal user has access to his/her own directory and programs which are assigned to him/her. He/she has no option to delete system files or change system settings. The only place where this user can do harm is in his/her own directory!
Another important reason for us to use Linux is that is not affected by viruses, even if viruses are opened from an attachment.
These were our reason to look at Ubuntu, in the next post we'll reveal the broad horizons FOSS opens for audio editing and radio automation.
www.ubuntu.org
www.gnu.org
Press Now
Since the beginning of this this project, when this radio station only an idea, we got help from Press Now. Press Now helped us with critical questions, tough remarks, and great advice.
They did not try to save us here, they were realistic and critical. Now, almost a year after our first contact Press Now decided they wanted to help the project also financially. They will help us to buy portable recorders for the radio station (the zoom H4), and wind-up radio's, actually the same as the US army spreads in Iraq (the KA-009), and by financing training.
Because Press Now will also post these messages on a blog on their website, this blog will be in English from now on.
Since the beginning of this this project, when this radio station only an idea, we got help from Press Now. Press Now helped us with critical questions, tough remarks, and great advice.
They did not try to save us here, they were realistic and critical. Now, almost a year after our first contact Press Now decided they wanted to help the project also financially. They will help us to buy portable recorders for the radio station (the zoom H4), and wind-up radio's, actually the same as the US army spreads in Iraq (the KA-009), and by financing training.
Because Press Now will also post these messages on a blog on their website, this blog will be in English from now on.
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