The UNESCO Chair on Community Media at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) has been awarded a prestigious grant by UNESCO’s International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) for a unique inter-regional initiative in East Africa.
The Chair, the only one of its kind in the world, headed by Prof. Vinod Pavarala, was set up at the Department of Communication, UoH in 2011 by UNESCO to promote the cause of community media through research, advocacy, capacity building, and knowledge dissemination.
The IPDC grant of 9500 (Nine thousand five hundred) US dollars to the Chair will support a joint project with the East African Community Media Network to build capacities for continuous improvement and sustainability of the community radio sector in the region. The work to be taken up later this year will involve the adaptation and application of the Community Radio Continuous Improvement Toolkit (CRCIT), developed by the UNESCO Chair team, to strengthen community radio in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi. The toolkit, available currently in English, Hindi, and Bengali, is already being used widely by community radio stations in India and Bangladesh.