Women on the Airwaves

About Women on the Airwaves

Women on the Global Community Airwaves (Women on the Airwaves - for short) is a podcast series bringing you stories from around the world, told by the women on the global community radio-waves, who are the movers where they live, working to take back the narratives about women, working to reverse the old and reconstructing communication step by step. The stories are brought to you by me, Birgitte Jallov, who have worked in this field for a lifetime, in many of the 70+ countries where I have worked, worldwide. This podcast series will identify and document community media as platforms and channels for increasing women’s role in their communities and in consequence thereof, in society in general. And it will seek answers to why and how – or why not?

Publisher

Birgitte Jallov

Category

society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

7 Mar 2023

Latest episode

7 Nov 2023

Latest episodes

18 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   7 Nov 2023

   Fernanda Maria, Radio Liberdade, Dili, Timor Leste

   Fernanda Maria has worked for 12 years in Radio Liberdade, a community radio in Dili, the capital of Timer Leste. Radio Liberdade works with the 'Fundacão Media Development Centre' working to support women's voices in the media and the voices of other underrepresented groups. Radio Liberdade is one of some 15 community radio stations, struggling for survival, as Fernanda tells us - but she and her station have some ideas about how to turn the stations sustainable! Despite the challenges, new stations appear, not least because the spoken word is so important in a reality with and only 60 % literacy rate. Since 2016 Fernanda has worked on a special programme on 'Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls and Gender-Based Violence' which she tells about in the podcast. Presently she works with Radio Liberdade to provide Journalism Training on Gender Sensitive Reporting. Timor-Leste's road to independence - achieved on 20 May 2002 - was long and traumatic in their struggle for self-determination. When their Portuguese colonial masters withdrew in 1975 – as they did in all other colonies including Mozambique - where one of the other radio women in this podcast series is from - Indonesia claimed the territory for itself and suppressed the independence movement. The UN took over the administration and supervised the territory's transition to independence in 2002. As Fernanda explains in our conversation, domestic and gender based violence is extremely high in the country – close to 60 % of the women (https://www.wvi.org/sites/default/files/Reducing%20GBV%20Evaluation%20summary_Final_A4_200%20copies.pdf) report to have been abused physically, so the focus of the radio station and the foundation – fundacão – which started it, is to work on ways of limiting violence against women. Radio Liberdade therefore works with a focus on Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls and Gender-Based Violence, and this is also the radio programme Fernanda is engaged with.

2. 

   25 Oct 2023

   Palmira Velasco, Senior Journalist, Researcher and founder of a women's community radio. Mozambique

   Palmira Velasco is a senior journalist, who has been at the forefront of democratic journalism in Mozambique, where she in 1987 started as a reporter at the big, state-run daily newspaper Notícias. With the peace accord signed in 1992, after an 18 year war, intercepted by a few free years of socialism, Palmira in 1994 joined a group of journalists that started DEMOS, the first independent weekly. This stood on the shoulders of a 1991 new press law, approved by government after the new democratic constitution (1990) and a year before the final signature to peace. This is how central a free media was to the standard bearers of the new Mozambique. Palmira become a senior reporter in Demos, and an editor, where she had the opportunity to travel the region and he world widely. During this time she co-initiated the Mozambican Women in Mass Media Association (AMCS) of which she was the executive director for 12 years. It was as an initiative of AMCS that Palmira co-initiated Mozambique’s first women’s radio: N’thiyana, meaning ‘Women’ in Emacua, one of the 132 languages in Mozambique, mostly spoken in one of the most populous provinces of Nampula. As a Community Radio Director Palmira was one of the driving forces in N’thiyana, and in the podcast she explains why a women’s radio was important and what some of the major challenges were. Since June 2016, Palmira works as a Programme Officer in Natural Resources and Gender section of the civil society based organisation: SKELEKANI. She focuses on research on Gender and the impact of extraction in the communities affected by the impact of extractive industry. Palmira continues to use her journalistic past when she writes stories about the struggling communities – children and women - published in different Magazines in Mozambique and at SEKELEKANI’s sites www.civilinfo.org.mz

3. 

   26 Sept 2023

   Jimena Lopes, Broadcaster in the feminist La Tribu FM, Buenos Aires, Argentina

   Jimena Lopez, broadcaster and assembly member of the community radio La Tribu FM, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Jimena Lopez has been a part of the station for nearly ten years, where she has had many different roles. Right now she is a part of the station’s communication team, responsible for Social media and other communication activities. She is also in the Station’s assembly made up by 20 core people, responsible for overall management, which meets up every second month. La Tribu started in 1989 and has been going uninterrupted since. Since 2006, when the new communication and media law[1] in Argentina legalized community media as the third sector with íts own regulations, La Tribu has been on air, legally. Jimena says that whereas the station is not a women’s station, it has a feminist approach in most of what it does. La Tribu is run by a collective of around 20 assembly members, who take turns on the many different administrative, practical and programmatic areas. The assembly members also work in the editorial groups, which also count many community members who come to the station, and take part in the ongoing training activities. Often, they are then, thereafter, effectively, softly integrated into the editorial teams, if and when they so wish. The station therefore never has a shortage of community broadcasters – and considers itself, sustainable. Part of the financial sustainability is secured through providing access to organisations who want to run their own programmes. When within the values and principles of the station, they can do so, and they pay for airtime and for rent of the studios. This secures a minimum financial basis along with projects that the station is a part of. La Tribu also has a cultural space in their radio-house, which has a bar and hosts different cultural events. The radio and the cultural space complement each other very well. It helps the radio to remain a lively place, where all who want to approach the station with issues, stories – or a desire to become one of the team, easily can access. Jimena estimates that Argentina has 2000 community radio stations, which have mushroomed since the new 2006-law was passed. They are all different – both due to the place where they are situated (big city? Rural area?) and the local culture. La Tribu is very active in the Latin American AMARC network[2], where stations from the continent meet regularly in the big, general group – and where an active women’s network run projects together and meet up. Jimena Lopez has a Social Communications Degree, is radio producer and host as well as Radio workshop coordinator. Jimena is also a Product Manager at an insurance company. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimena-l%C3%B3pez-costantini-4359174b [1] https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2009-11-23/argentina-new-media-law/ [2] https://www.amarcalc.org/

4. 

   23 Sept 2023

   Catherine Vhutuza, Vemuganga Community Radio, Chipinge, Zimbabwe

   Catherine Vhutuza is a broadcaster in the Ndau-speaking Vemuganga community radio in Chipinge. Catherine focused on strengthening the voice and rights of women including in areas of land rights and violence against women. Vemuganga Community Radio Vemuganga Community Radio (VCR) is a registered Trust established to heighten the creation of a reliable and direct platform for the people of Zimbabwe and in particular the Ndau speaking people of Chipinge in Manicaland to enter into dialogue and analytical discussion among themselves and decide for themselves on changes that affect their lives so that they become active in implementing them. The stimulus has been to create a stage for sharing, researching and disseminating information that promote the integration and social cohesion that cultivates sustainable community development through the promotion of Ndau language, culture, norms and values. The initiative was registered as a Trust in 2012(MA373/12) before it was awarded an operating licence by the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ) in November 2021. The vision of the initiative: A self – believing community that actively participates in the dissemination and preservation of socio-economic and cultural knowledge from its surroundings. The Mission of the initiative: A non-profit and inclusive community platform that exists to collect, share and broadcast information that promotes sustainable development in Chipinge and ensure people’s right to information and community participation by expressing the voice and thoughts of grassroots people in the development process. Vemuganga Community Radio and Geographical Area Vemuganga Community Radio Initiative is licenced to cover Checheche, Chibuwe and Chipinge urban where it is covering 22 wards of Chipinge with an approximately 50 000 households and a population of 212 980. It aims to enrich the livelihood of the Ndau people, through the content that is created by the people and for the people of the Ndau community. COME JOIN US!!!

5. 

   23 Sept 2023

   Kadi Souley Bonkano, Developing a women's radio in Niamey, Niger

   I met Kadi Souley Bonkano in Niger’s capital city Niamey first time in 2007, when she was a broadcaster in the local community radio, Radio Anfani and again in 2013 in the office of APAC, Association des professionnelles africaines de la communication, the Media Women’s Association there, where I was preparing a new project for the Danish Embassy, including women and media issues. Kadi was preparing a Women’s Community Radio station back then, and we stayed in touch. Kadi all along worked to develop the women’s radio based in a local women’s association she had founded, called FAHAM. Faham is a word borrowed from Arabic which means understanding. And Kadi wants to ensure education and ‘understanding’ – also of women’s perspectives, experiences, dreams and lives through FAHAM. Faham was created in 2005 as an apolitical, non-denominational and non-profit national association, focusing on ways to ensure equity and greater inclusion of the voices of women living in semi-urban and rural areas. The association soon realised that to achieve their goals, community radio, which Kadi had experience with from earlier, would be not only a good way, it became a priority, and FAHAM got a broadcast license for the radio in 2010. FAHAM had the support of a former MP, who secured free offices in the suburbs of Niamey, and from Kadi’s sister, the station got a computer, a printer and a photocopier which both was used for training and functioned as a small telecentre, allowing the volunteers to have an income while waiting for the installation of the equipment. FAHAM therefore started training women leaders in the community to become community broadcasters, and identified an acute need for a community school, which the association started. It is for children 3-5 years old and financed by the parents, who pay 15 euros per year. With the school in place, it was easier for the community radio volunteers to spend time at the station. Whereas the school is still in place, the station closed down after heavy rains flooded the association's office and they had to realise that the location of the offices could not guarantee the stability and safety of the radio that they needed. The broadcasters continued producing programmes which were broadcast on other existing stations. Activities were suspended in 2019 when COVID 19 arrived. Last year, in 2022, FAHAM started a reorganization of the association and the radio-focus. FAHAM intends to be the 1st web radio in Niger by women and for women, ensuring dialogue for women to share and act together, breaking down constraints on women’s access to media and public spaces. The station is intended to contribute to strengthening the image of rural women and it intends to reach and impact on 25,000 to 30,000 households. Again, FAHAM trains women leaders – the future broadcasters – and together they have worked to identify women's information needs in the community. But all this Kadi should tell herself – Being francophone we much appreciate her going out of her way to talk with us in English – the language of this podcast series. – so, over to Kadi, Come join us!!!

6. 

   30 Aug 2023

   Jubiel M. Zulu, Zambia, journalist and women's rights advocate

   Hi, we’re back: Women on the global community airwaves! Today's episode brings us to Southern Africa, to Zambia’s capital Lusaka, where I talk with Jubiel Zulu, an award-winning journalist and media and communication specialist. Now working as a District Information Officer in Zambia's Eastern Province. When we spoke, Jubiel was still in Kwithu FM, in the capital Lusaka, where she has worked for the past ten years. Here she integrated issues of importance to women and women’s lives in the general programming: political, economic, social, cultural. In our conversation Jubiel gives examples of how the programming she engages in support women’s beginning change in their lives, while there is still a lot to do. And while our conversation focuses on here work as a radio journalist, Jubiel continues with that same focus as a district information officer in Zambia’s Eastern Province. Through TV, newspapers and online, she informs the communities – and not least the women – about the many issues of importance. As she says in our conversation, there is so much basic information that people do not have access to. One example of her work as a District Information Officer (DIO) Chadiza district is this article where she tells about fistula, a terrible, life changing condition suffered by no less than 25% of Zambia’s women (link (https://www.eas.gov.zm/?p=2949)). The women of the district are lucky to have a DIO like her! Jubiel has a bachelor of Arts in Mass communication and Public Relations from Cavendishi University, and she is Vice President of the Zambia Institute of Independent Media Alliance, a ZAMWA (Zambia Association of Women in the Media) board member and has won both international and national awards for her journalism.

7. 

   29 Aug 2023

   Kanchan K.Malik, India, professor, advocate, learner and trainer with a focus on women's space in community radio

   Kachan K. Malik (PhD) is a university professor at the University of Hyderabad and is a Faculty Fellow with the ‘UNESCO Chair on Community Media’, there, where she unfolds her work in support of community media in India and in South Asia. Kanchan presents herself as a researcher, learning from the powerful people building community media where her journeys take her. Kanchan has been with the Department of Communication, UoH, since 2007, where she also served as Head from 2017-20. She has been a Faculty Fellow with the ‘UNESCO Chair on Community Media’ since 2011, an Editor of the e-newsletter – ‘CR News’ and the Vice-Chair for the Ethics Working Group of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). With a dual Master’s in Economics and Mass Communication, Kanchan worked as a journalist with ‘The Economic Times’, New Delhi, before settling for a career in academics. For over two and a half decades, Kanchan K. Malik’s academic interests and endeavours have been in Community and Alternative Media; Women and Community Media; Journalism Studies; and Media Ethics. She has worked with national and international research projects and published scholarly papers and chapters on media interventions by non-governmental organisations for empowerment at the grassroots level. Her research has also contributed to policy advocacy efforts for community radio in India. Prof. Malik has co-authored with Prof. Vinod Pavarala the much-cited book ‘Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India’ (Sage: 2007) to which she refers in our conversation. Their other co-edited book is titled ‘Community Radio in South Asia: Reclaiming the Airwaves’ (Routledge: 2020). She recently worked on the manual ‘Strengthening Gender Sensitive Practices and Programming in Community Radio’ (UNESCO, 2021).

8. 

   23 Aug 2023

   Olena Zinenko, Kharkiv, Ukraine, about community media, women, culture and the war

   Olena Zinenko from Kharkiv in Ukraine, takes us in this episode through the recent media history of Ukraine, where communication - and culture - has gotten a whole new importance in the present war situation, where also new voices are heard in new ways. As she says: the state media, the commercial and oligarch media create media products – she and her colleagues focus in their media production on processes, on creating understanding and of becoming. A peace activist and a media consultant at the Centre of Gender Culture’s Media Laboratory, Olina has worked with multimedia reportage workshops and creative journalism. Olena had to leave Kharkiv with her husband and two daughters when their city was attacked – fleeing first to Poland and thereafter to Germany, where she at the time of the interview (January 2023) was based in Frankfurt an der Oder. Here she continues her research at Frankfurt’s Viadrina University, while waiting to return home. Olena in this interview stresses that the war has brought the Ukrainian people together as one, and that culture is at the core of much media work by women. Olena uses her social media presence to translate the important, hard news from Ukraine in English to her broad group of followers, and she shares a heart breaking observation – and positive in the midst of the horror of the war: when reading the posts of her women followers on the social media, she becomes relieved when they begin to search for manicure and other things related to keeping themselves and their bodies in their new realities - this means that they HAVE found a place to live, a school for their children and have food on the table – only then will they begin to think of other things. Olena Zinenko (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Olena_Zinenko) is senior lecturer and Ph.D. researcher at the Chair of Media Communiation, Sociology Department, V.N. Karazin's Kharkiv National University in Ukraine. Her research interest lies in a rethinking of the approaches to the media representation of the public events in the context of social and political transformations. Read more here: https://progressive.org/latest/olena-zinenko-trust-in-people-abramian-220504/ (https://progressive.org/latest/olena-zinenko-trust-in-people-abramian-220504/) https://www.europa-uni.de/en/forschung/institut/institut_europastudien/IFES-Team/gastwissenschaftler_innen/index.html (https://www.europa-uni.de/en/forschung/institut/institut_europastudien/IFES-Team/gastwissenschaftler_innen/index.html)

9. 

   22 Aug 2023

   Caroline Mitchell, UK, a lifetime of work to secure women's voices in community radio in the UK

   Professor (PhD) of radio, researcher, networker and beyond and above all a feminist activist, Caroline Mitchell has since she joined 'Women's Airwaves' worked to turn her professional and social engagement real, through strengthening women and women's voices with a focus to ensure space, justice and empowerment for and of women. Fem FM - an 8-day radio licence in 1992 - co-created by Caroline, planned for a year, housed in a borrowed 4-storey building, filled with the 200 women (two hundred women, Caroline insists) who had taken holidays or in other ways made the dream of a lifetime come true: UK's first all women's radio station. In this podcast Caroline tells about Fem FM and all that followed - and she shares towards the end of the interview her advice on the non-negotiables when wanting to ensure a proper space for women in a new - or existing - community radio station. Caroline is Professor of Radio and Participation at University of Sunderland, UK. Her research and practice are centred on community media production and cultures of transnational community radio and women's/feminist radio. She specialises in using mapping and participatory action research methods. Caroline has published widely about women and radio, including the edited volume ‘Women and Radio: Airing Differences’, (Routledge, 2000). More background and links can be found at her site on https://empowerhouse.dk/women-on-the-global-community-airwaves/

10. 

    5 Apr 2023

    Saritha Thomas, India, Founding Director People's Power Collective

    Saritha Thomas || Managing Trustee, PPC India | Director, PPC UK PPC's founder and driving force, Saritha has nurtured a lifelong love for radio. In this episode Saritha takes us through her own voyage into and with community radio as a people's communication and development platform, and we learn about the community radio station Mandakini Ki Awaz in Bhaduj village in Uttarakhand state in the far north of India, in the Himalaya's, neighbouring Nepal. We learn about how it became known as a women's radio station, not by Saritha's design, but as the women were the most interested, courageous and bold, engaging with the station from the beginning 10 years ago. Today the PPC counts five partner community radio stations, including the newest: Sona FM in Salem in the South Eastern Indian state of Tamil Nadu - on air for just four month at the time of recording the interview (March 2023). An alumna of Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai's, Social Media & Communications programme, Saritha has worked in India, UAE and the UK. Her time in commercial radio - spanning popular radio networks such as, Radio City, the Arabian Radio Network, BBC World Service Radio and BBC Radio 4 - gave way to full-time social entrepreneurship, and community radio activism.A fellow at The School of Social Entrepreneurs, London, Saritha was the only member of her Graduating class with an overseas social enterprise: PPC. Saritha believes in the life-changing capacity of community radio, which offers isolated communities an accessible, binding social medium. She hopes that the medium, which places at its hearts a voice unencumbered by the prejudices of class, caste and creed, will offer these communities a way forward: eroding a range of social evils, simply by being inclusive, and building stronger, forward-thinking communities.

11. 

    26 Mar 2023

    Women on the Air in Europe 1983

    “Women on the air - Women in (Community) Radio in Europe” *** This podcast is a recording of my cassette bringing you the sounds and the atmosphere of what women’s community radio in 1983 in Europe was. The directory and the travel before that are the earliest known attempt to systematically document women’s engagement in (community) radio in (Western) Europe in the early 80s (1983). You can dive into the directory here (https://empowerhouse.dk/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Women-on-the-air-1983-womens-CR-in-Europe-Birgitte-Jallov.pdf) – and understand the framework and background in this article (https://empowerhouse.dk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Women-and-broadcasting-Doing-Radio-Women-on-the-air-w_frontpage-3.pdf) invited for a centennial celebration by women in UK on the occasion of BBC’s 100 year. All I can say is – enjoy! And come join us!

12. 

    18 Mar 2023

    Welcome to Women on the Global Community Airwaves!

    Women on the Global Airwaves is a podcast series bringing you stories from around the world. The stories are brought to you by me, Birgitte Jallov, who has worked in this area for a lifetime from within my initiative: EMPOWERHOUSE. In many realities women’s voices are among those least heard and women are often not being respected with equal access to their human rights.Women in community radio anre working to change these narratives and realities. They ensure that women’s voices and stories and sharing their life and realities in the public, increasing the respect and space. Impact assessments of community media on different continents and in different realities have shown that when community media break the silence, unhealthy traditions change. It takes some time, but it happens. One of the most prominent impacts I have found when working in communities everywhere is, that violence against women and children has decreased, and that women have begun to have a more active, visible and respected role in the community.In this podcast series the community radio women will, themselves, identify and document their experiences with community media as platforms and channels for empowering women and increasing women’s role in the concrete communities and in consequence thereof, in society in general. And the podcasts seek answers to why and how – or why not? Birgitte Jallov is the founding Director of EMPOWERHOUSE, and has since 1980 supported community media most of the 70 countries, where she has worked. Convinced that values are at the core of good developments, hers are found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Feminism and the principle that people should speak for themselves. Birgitte is an advocate, trainer, midwife and believer in the power of building sustainable ‘people’s communication channels’ and women’s important role in and around the media. Birgitte’s experience around the power of community media – and how to turn them sustainable – is reflected in her book: ‘EMPOWERMENT RADIO – Voices building a community’ (https://empowerhouse.dk/empowerment-radio-the-book/). Come join us!

13. 

    16 Mar 2023

    Rose-Haji Mwalimu, Tanzania, Women's Rights and Community Radio Specialist

    Rose-Haji Mwalimu, a women’s rights and press freedom activist, a community radio advocate, trainer and supporter and a voice for women’s equal access to the airwaves has been active in these fields for a lifetime. Known, recognized and loved in every one of the 35 community radio stations in Tanzania, she has trained and mentored, she is simply known as ‘Mama Rose’ – a name she is proud of, and which is being used far beyond the radio stations and Tanzania’s borders. Rose has among many other things been active since her early 20s – more than 30 years ago – with the creation of TAMWA – the Tanzania Media Women’s Association, later the creation of the Tanzania chapter of the International Association of Women in Radio and TV, IAWRT, while she has been directing press freedom work in Tanzania and grown into becoming a midwife and trainer of the Tanzania community media. Rose has played an active part in the mushrooming community media landscape growing from 2 to the present 35 stations from her seat as national director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa, Tanzania, her communication work in UN Women and later UNESCO. Now an independent consultant, Rose continues to support all that can advance people’s lives, culture and positive development – and community media are an important aspect of all of this. Come join us! https://www.linkedin.com/in/rose-haji-mwalimu-72101b20/?originalSubdomain=tz

14. 

    13 Mar 2023

    Gwendolyn Gay L. Gaongen, Philippines, Station Manager Radyo Sagada, Cordillera

    Gwen is the station manager of the Radyo Sagada. The station has been on air since 2011 and Gwen has been on of the radio team since then. Conceptualized in 2003, it only went on air in an experimental mode in 2010 and for real in 2011. It is the Philippines’ only indigenous peoples’ radio located in the mountain province, the Condillera, in the north of the main Luzon island. The station came into existence on the initiative of a progressive former mayor and a community elder. They called on the civil society organisations of the area. Women have had an important role in the station from the onset, where Women and peasants have been prioritized also in the board of the station with each two seats, whereas other sector are represented by only one seat. The reason to create the station was to ensure dialogue and debate among the communities of the area – and thereby development. In the podcast Gwen unfolds how this all has developed since. Gwen talks about the how the dangerous situation for journalists in the Philippines including red-tagging (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-tagging_in_the_Philippines) influences Radyo Sagada.

15. 

    7 Mar 2023

    Karolina Rogóz-Namiotka, Poland, Radio UWM, Olsztyn

    Karolina Rogóz-Namiotko is the creator, creator and presenter of "Lejdi Gada - women at the microphone". It is a program broadcast on student radio UWM FM in Olsztyn (Poland) about women who fulfill themselves in life through passion and work. The guests of Karolina Rogóz-Namiotko are female soldiers, psychologists, priests, cooks, dressmakers, entrepreneurs, presidents, mothers, etc. The host of the show, Karolina, believes that the woman who acts with passion and commitment is able to inspire more women to change for the better. It is a program about self-development, self-acceptance and self-esteem. Karolina Rogóz-Namiotko explains how important this program is for her "meeting other women gives me a lot of energy and great sisterly love”. Come join us!

16. 

    7 Mar 2023

    Siphathisiwe Ncube, Zimbabwe, Radio Ntepe-Manama, Gwanda

    Siphathisiwe has worked with Ntepe-Manama Community Radio based in Gwanda, Matabeleland South , Zimbabwe for 10 years. Since 2013 the community has been organising, training and advocating for access to get licenses. The station finally got its licence and sending permission in 2022 as one of the first community radios to go on air in Zimbabwe. During the almost 10 year period prior to this, the community brought out community news and information via whats app, facebook and twitter. As Siphathisiwe says in the interview, the station is based in the deep rural area of Matabeleland South where there used to be no or very little reliable local information, and where people had difficulty getting other news as well. The Ntepe Manama Community Radio has all along taken upon itself to make up for this – and grateful now to finally be on air. The more than 20.000 active listeners bears witness to this fact. But listen in – there is a lot more! Come join us!

17. 

    7 Mar 2023

    Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls, Co-Founder of FemLINKpacific (Coordinated the organisation 2000 - 2018)

    Sharon has for the past more than 20 years has worked to empower women – young women, rural women, women living with disabilities and women in the LGBTQI circles - through engaging them in the media and getting an empowered and insightful voice. In this process and through the organisation she founded, FemLINKpacific, she has helped found and form robust and sustainable women’s community media platforms in Fiji and other Pacific Island countries. Sharon is a second-generation Fiji Island feminist working on the intersection of gender, media, communications and peace by supporting the development and production of appropriate and accessible media. Following a career in mainstream broadcasting, she co-founded FemLINKpacific in 2000. This became the basis for the development of a feminist media network which included the Pacific’s first women-led community radio network and the innovative Women’s Weather Watch information-communication system. Sharon is a member of the Generation Equality Forum Civil Society Advisory Group and a taskforce member of the WPS-Humanitarian Action Compact building on her contribution to the UN Women-convened Civil Society Advisory Group, the first UN Women Global Civil Society Advisory Group, the High Level Advisory Group for the Global Study on UNSCR1325+15 & UN Expert Group on Women and the Media. She was included in the 1000Peacewomen for the Nobel Peace Prize (2005) and received the 2014 NGO CSW Forum Woman of Distinction award in recognition of her dedication to enable and empower community media production in print, digital story-telling, online/social media, and television to increase visibility of women and young women’s viewpoints and realities. Come join us!

18. 

    7 Mar 2023

    Maru Chavez, Mexico, Radio Violeta

    Radio Violeta went on air in 2019 as a feminist community radio station in Mexico City. The station has xx women involved and broadcast 24/7. The station has around 150.000 listeners and receive regular feed-back from women listeners stressing the importance to have the station, which covers issues of special importance to women, which is covered no-where else. Radio Violeta consciously challenges the traditional ways of the media and aim to transform communication to be more real: real women’s real voices covering all the issues of importance in women’s lives. Come join us!

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