Making Waves: RADIO GUNE YI
Stories of Participatory Communication
for Social Change
TITLE: Radio Gune Yi
COUNTRY: Senegal
MAIN FOCUS: Rural children
PLACE: Dakar and rural areas of Senegal
BENEFICIARIES: Children of Senegal at large
PARTNERS: Radio Television de Senegal (RTS)
FUNDING: PLAN International
MEDIA: Radio
Rural children behind the microphone. Children talking to children on the radio. Children making information available to their parents. Children earning the confidence and respect of their community. New organisations emerging at the community level under the leadership of children. This is happening in rural Senegal since Radio Gune Yi an unusual communication project, started its activities.
In villages where the radio recording activities are held, clubs are formed and attended by children who organise other initiatives, like the centres for collective listening. In certain communities, children have mobilised for setting up theatre troupes and door-to-door sensitisation activities.
In Goria, following a Radio Gune Yi recording on the problem of education for girls, the children organised themselves to sensitise their parents about putting their girls in school.
In the Louga region, a theatre troupe goes from village to village for paid performances. With the proceeds they buy tools to clean up their neighbourhoods.
"What they listen to on the radio makes them develop very diverse behaviours, the menu of choices is broader for them now. There are things which, in our time, were taken care of by adults, but which are now taken care of by the children themselves. There is information on illness, which I didn't know, like AIDS, and on the precautionary measures to take. All this is transmitted by children, which makes the broadcast a pleasure for them to listen to", remarked the vice president of the rural community of Mbodokhan.
Most of the initiatives are promoted by those who have participated in Radio Gune Yi recordings, and the admiration and respect that the other children have for them leads to their own participation in those initiatives. It was for this reason that in Mbodokhan, a youth of 18 years, who didn't participate in the activities, organised a theatre group which does skits on clean environment, AIDS, and the education of girls: "I followed the example of what I saw during a recording".
Radio Gune Yi is a radio programme done bychildren for children. Its name identifies it because "Gune Yi" means "children" in Wolof, the language most widely spoken in Senegal. It is produced by PLAN International Senegal, and all the network stations of Radio Télévision du Senegal broadcast it.
The programme was established by PLAN International to promote the Rights of the Child, mainly in relation to freedom of expression and access to information. Since it started in December 1995, Radio Gune Yi has visited more than 100 villages. More than 1,000 children have participated directly in production, while several thousand children have attended the recordings. Hundreds of thousands of children listen to the programme regularly.
The main objectives of Radio Gune Yi can be summarised as follows:
- Promote the Rights of the Child, particularly the right of freedom of expression
- Permit youths to have access to information concerning their cultural heritage
- Encourage youths to participate actively in the development of their society
- Broadcast educational messages in the domains of health, the fight against AIDS, education of girls especially, and habitat
- Provide positive entertainment for Senegalese youth
- Encourage local decision-makers to take into account the aspirations of the youth of Senegal
- Introduce children to radio and offer them a unique creative experience
- Contribute reinforcement to the awareness promoted by PLAN
Once a year, in August, ten recording sites are selected. The selection is made based upon requests submitted by rural villages or urban towns which would like to receive Radio Gune Yi On this basis, the Radio Gune Yi research person does a production research field mission during which the final selection of villages is made. He/she meets with the communities, explains the concept of the broadcast, organises focus groups with children and adults to identify subjects and themes.
During these visits to the villages, not only are the children involved, but the school or literacy programme directors, and the village authorities as well. This participative method allows a selection of themes directly concerning the communities and assures that the children in-part determine the broadcast.
The follow-up begins after a date has been confirmed for the recording usually about ten days before the broadcast is scheduled. The village is reminded and the preselection of potential child-participants is assured for the broadcast. As a general rule, two sites relatively close to one another are chosen. Thirty children from the two sites are brought together for a four-day training.
After the recording and editing is done, the seven RTS stations broadcast the programme on different days and hours. The schedule of broadcasting allows Radio Gune Yi to enjoy as much national coverage as possible.
The contact persons are responsible for the follow-up and for encouraging activities in the listening centres, which are created in every community where a recording experience has taken place.
The results of a study on communication and childhood in West Africa, conducted in 1995 by CECI (Canadian Centre for Study and Cooperation), and CIERRO (Ouagadougou Inter-State Centre for Rural Radio), showed that in general children are neglected. In Senegal, only 15 percent of radio and television programmes address children. Programmes for children and youths are very rare, and when they do exist and are broadcast regularly, they lack clear objectives and quality.
The Senegalese audio-visual environment offers very few time slots that concentrate on children. Radio Television du Senegal (RTS) broadcasts "Kaddu Xaleyi" (the word for children), a programme in which children are interviewed, but is conceived and presented by adults and recorded in-studio. Walfadjri broadcasts Bébé Walf aprogramme in which children dedicate songs by telephone.
Children make up more than half of the total population in Senegal. They do not have appropriate access to information and do not enjoy freedom of expression. According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the media should broadcast information and programmes presenting social and cultural utility for the child, encouraging the growth of his/her personality, the development of his/her capacities and mental and physical aptitudes.
The goals of Radio Gune Yi's programmes are to inform, educate and entertain the children. The various segments about history and tradition, mastering the language, the rights of the child, on socio-cultural themes, and on educational themes such as health, AIDS, education of the girl child, and on PLAN International's activities are conceived in such a way as to transmit important messages to the young public.
The results of surveys show that Radio Gune Yi fulfills its mandate to educate, inform and entertain the children. What is even better, it also does so for adults. The majority of listeners say that the programme entertains and informs them, and that they learn from it.
"We, the parents of students, were agreeably surprised to discover that our children had so much knowledge and so many ideas", says the president of the association of the parents of students at Mbodokhan. The adults realised that the children know lots of things that they learned at school and elsewhere, outside of the family. They know things tied to their traditions, which they demonstrate by telling fables, making reports on the history of their villages or their ancestors.
The parents were reluctant in the beginning, when they didn't know Radio Gune Yi or the content of the programming. After Radio Gune Yis broadcast, they let their children try new experiences and generally had more confidence in them.
"My participation in Radio Gune Yi gave me more status with my comrades and friends. I became very popular after my participation in Radio Gune Yi because not many people talk on the radio. Myparents even nicknamed me, 'Handsome!'" says a 13-year-old boy from Medina Gounass.
Children become more responsible. Radio Gune Yi allows them to question adults directly and to show their knowledge, which they couldn't always do. They enjoy a new respect from adults; and the entire community has gained new knowledge.
Says an elder from Mbodokhan: "Knowledge is like a lost needle. A child can find it as well as an adult".
Radio Gune Yi is one of those communication projects where the process is as important as the product. The process of recording at the community level has an immediate impact, enhanced by the broadcasting of the programmes.
Radio Gune Yi is not only a radio programme; it is also a local event; a rare event, which has an impact on the child participants as well as on their parents, spectators and on decision-makers. Speaking on the radio during a recording session is clearly a unique experience for the children. It permits them the rare opportunity to express themselves in public, to learn by doing, to show others their capacities and competencies, and to be heard throughout the country. The performance evokes reactions and feelings.
The children's exposition, is a centre of interest and hope for the community. Children are seen as individuals who have knowledge and positive abilities, which should be promoted. They are viewed as members able to contribute to their community.
The programme mandate is to offer Senegalese youth a space for expression and exchange of ideas to give the children a unique experience, to inform, educate and entertain considering that children learn better by doing, and that messages transmitted by children are better received by children. They speak Wolof a language understood by practically all Senegalese and use children's words, which simplify the messages and make them more accessible.
The informality of the relationship between Radio Gune Yi and RTS and the absence of a formal contract is a potential threat to the programme; which remains dependent upon the goodwill of the two parties and has no guarantee of being sustained.
The research missions for the documentation are only done once a year over a foreseen period of one month. This has two negative effects: first, collecting information once a year makes it sometimes obsolete at recording time, several months later. On the other hand, visiting ten sites in five regions (a total of 50) in only one month is too heavy a programme to be carried out in-depth. The rule of one site per day could be introduced.
Another point concerning production is the paradox that although the programme is broadcast at Wolof, all the jingles and most of the theme songs are in French.
The role of the listening centres which should be created systematically at the recording sites is not well-defined. Also not defined is a coherent strategy for the setting up of listening centres and their activities. In certain regions the centres are set up at the recording sites to allow collective listening and to encourage activities for youths. In other regions, the centres are set up on sites where PLAN is active or where Radio Gune Yi has not yet come. Certain Radio Gune Yi contacts would like to create listening centres in villages that don't receive radio, and therefore, don't have access to Radio Gune Yi
This chapter is largely based on: Radio Gune Yi: Evaluation Report by Savina Ammassari and Jean Fréderic Bernard, Centre for Development Communication (CDC), March 1999; and also on e-mail exchanges with Mimi Brazeaum.
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