By Manickam A.

By Fr. Bijo Thomas, Station Director, Community Radio Mattoli, Wayanad, Kerala, India.
 

Radio Mattoli, a community radio station in  Dwaraka, located in the Wayanad district of Kerala, India, won the award for best thematic radio program by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The station was recognized for having the best quality and most relevant and timely coverage of climate mitigation and Indigenous practices out of 448 community radio stations in India. The award was presented to Radio Mattoli on July 23, 2023. 

By Tokunbo Dada (Yoruba)

In Nigeria, many farmers didn't trust vaccines for COVID-19, making it hard to fight the virus. With financial support from Cultural Survival’s Indigenous Community Media Fund, Paramount 94.5 FM Abeokuta in Nigeria, undertook Project New Hope, which used radio broadcasts to teach about vaccines in a way that was culturally relevant in the Yoruba language. The station built a bridge between doctors and farmers, showing them how vaccines could save lives.

By Bandana Danuwar (Danuwar)

By working in community radio, a group of young Indigenous women in Udayapur district in eastern Nepal is making their voices heard and winning the trust of their communities. Now younger generations are inspired by their work.

Cultural Survival’s Indigenous Community Media Fund provides funding opportunities, accompaniment, and training to Indigenous community media platforms to carry out their crucial informational, documentary, and cultural work within and outside their communities. Since 2017, the Indigenous Community Media Fund has awarded 298 grants, supporting community media projects in 29 countries across 3 continents, totaling $1,772,361.

 By Maranki Community Radio

Radio Maranki 89 FM is an initiative of the Marankiari Bajo Indigenous community. Our story began in 1992 with the desire to have our own bilingual media that allows Indigenous communities to share their stories, origins, and traditions. We are located in Peru, in the department of Junín, province of Chanchamayo, district of Perené. Our mother tongue is Iñaane Ashéninka Katonkosatzi Parenini and is a linguistic variant of Ashéninka of the Upper Perené.

We are seeds that germinate in the middle of the tropical jungle, in southwest Colombia, in the municipality of Barbacoas, department of Nariño. This area is historically known to the Awá Peoples as cuaiquer (kwaiker). We, Awá, also live throughout the territory that now includes Colombia and Ecuador.

Radio Tuklik serves five communities in the municipalities of Mayapan, Cantamayec, and Tahdziú, located adjacent to each other in the south and east regions of the Yucatan, Mexico. The state of Yucatan consists of 106 municipalities across 7 regions: west, northwest, center, central coast, northeast, east, and south.

San Manuel is a small Indigenous community of the Tseltal and Ch'ol speaking people, located in the first canyon that forms the first two mountain ranges in front of the plains of the Gulf of Mexico and at the height of the city of Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. According to the 2020 census, the community is formed by 390 people. But in reality it has more than 700 inhabitants, because many inhabitants were not counted in the census for unknown reasons.

We are a radio group composed of Mapuche Lafkenche from Budi, Chile, an ancestral territory located in the ninth region of the Araucanía, a Wallmapu (traditional territory of the Mapuche people). We are Indigenous farmers and subsist on raising small-scale livestock. We are adult speakers of the Mapuche language. We are an autonomous media, self-financed mainly by the communities we serve.

On November 26, 2006, more than 20 people met in Chuicaxtún, Canton Chivax, Totonicapán, Guatemala, to create the project of Community Radio La Niña 88.5 FM. Without any prior technical knowledge of radio broadcasting, production, programming, administration, or how to install a transmitter, we took our first steps in community communication.

Gam ‘yu jah!