“The classmates are excited! During the internship, it was noted that they were already on the air,” said Elena Brito, a representative of Women’s Association Q'imb'al and one of 16 participants of the speech and radio formats workshop that took place on September 17 and 18, 2019, in the organization's facilities, in Nebaj, Quiche, Guatemala. Women’s Association Q'imb'al is a Cultural Survival Community Media Grant Program partner.
“I never imagined that I was going to do voice-over practices,” said Brito. “At the community radio station, we are going to speak in Ixil and Spanish, one of the programming topics will be the strengthening of the participation of women,” she pointed out.
Vicente Jacinto, of the Mayan University, said, “We learned through practice what mistakes are made when using a microphone.” On the first day, the workshop participants practiced diaphragmatic breathing, vocalization, and articulation exercises. Through group work, they analyzed and listed mispronounced words and they realized that the absence of good diction distorts people's speech.
As time progressed, the exercises increased and the questions were more constant, they learned how to handle the microphone. As an activity, they organized themselves in groups to discuss the issues of migration, pollution, and suicide using the interview format, then practice.
“Community radio responds to the needs of the community, and not to the sale of services and products as commercial radios do. It is important to learn about radio formats, thus giving listeners a diversity of content that is informative and educational. Producers need to learn how to write and record an effective radio message,” said Cesar Gomez of Cultural Survival, facilitator of the workshop.
Within the diversity of today’s media, each one has its target audience. There are very sensationalist media, who sell violence, death and do not report what happens in the political and economic life of the country, much less the laws that are promoting the President and deputies that affect Indigenous communities. The participants concluded, after making a brief analysis of the content of the media, that there is a lack of knowledge of the national reality because most corporate media respond to the interests of business not communities.
“With the information received, we can start making content in the Ixil language, because it is easy for us to use our mother tongue, also our Spanish language will be improved with the practice of the exercises and reading,” participants emphasized.
This is the second workshop organized by the Women’s Association Q'imb'al, Ixil University, Fundamaya, Q'asabyol, Red Laval Iq ', with the support of Cultural Survival and WAAC, to strengthen the technical capabilities of volunteers from the organizations. All, at the end of this second stage, showed their satisfaction and desire to continue learning to apply the knowledge acquired in community radio production.
