The Community Radio Association of Odisha is spearheading a campaign to forge an alliance with the people living in the most difficult parts of the State to take grassroots governance to a new height.
Amidst the din of three tier panchayat elections, it will be celebrating the World Radio Day in the capital city to extend cooperation to the people to improve governance and services in the villages.
The theme of the Radio Day celebration will be ‘Governance in the grassroots.’ All the 12 functional community radio stations of the State will ally to run empowerment programmes through radio.
The year-long campaign will be kicked off in Bhubaneswar on February 13 followed by a two-day event.
The first day will see a radio caravan “Radio on Wheel” with a mobile recording studio moving around the city providing the platform to the people of the capital city the voice they always wanted to be heard. It will start from Master Canteen square, and culminate at the doorsteps of the orphans living in the SoS village near SUM Hospital. In between it will broadcast live the voices of the community in the slums of Satya nagar Kali Basti etc through its partner SOA Radio, Bhubaneswar. The less privileged like the visually challenged in Odisha Blind Association in Satya Nagar and youths of NISWASS will also be discussing their issues.
The community radios in Konark, Balipatna, Jagatsinghpur, Phulbani, Daspalla, Cuttack, Nuapada , Bhadrak, Ghatagaon and Jajpur will be covering the programme live.
The Association has also planned a workshop titled ‘Empowering community through Radio’ on February 14 here to find ways and means to popularizing radio across the State and also find ways to bring more community voice to radio. This workshop will discuss among other things community radio policy, scope and Government initiative both by the Centre and the State.
Officials from Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, I and PR Department, Agriculture Department of Government of Odisha are scheduled to participate.