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    Radio and marginalisation: Screaming out their childhood


Forget austere classrooms, blackboards and bored, passive children
whose minds are elsewhere while they repeat after the teacher in
unison. Today millions of children learn about life in the street
and in slums, children who are dispossessed, stripped and deprived
of the basic conditions that could help make them complete
citizens. Marginalization of millions of children is becoming one
of the scourges of the century's end. Be it in Rio de Janeiro,
Bogota, Bamako or Lagos, street children are everywhere. We try to
avoid looking squarely at the phenomenon since it reflects a
society where even the most fundamental moral values are being
eroded at a dizzy pace. Nonetheless, despite the disquiet we may
feel at the thought of millions of youngsters to whom destiny is an
enemy to be defeated and life, a long struggle for survival, they
too want to be heard. When work and the street replace school as
the setting to live and learn, radio becomes an important means to
manifest the children's extraordinary vitality and irrepressible
desire to participate in societies that have offered them nothing
but exclusion, hunger and illness.


                   Ground-breaking experiences

Little by little, accounts of experience in radio with marginalized
children are reaching our ears. In Chile, for example, last year
six community radio stations began an ambitious project to give a
forum to children from marginalized urban neighbourhoods. The
"Amigos" children's radio project has been a success in every way.
Several hundred children have taken to the streets, parks and other
public places not only looking for information to enable them to
understand their world better but also to find answers to the most
important questions in their consciences. They have demanded their
right to be heard and to be respected. Armed with tape recorders
and press cards showing their "child journalist" status, some
children have been bold enough to interview the president of the
Republic. Another experience (described below) with working street
children in Ecuador is proof of the rallying potential of radio in
a marginalized setting.


                 Children's voices in the street

Six in the morning. Already children of all ages crisscross the
streets of Loja, trying to earn a bit of money to add to the family
income. Their occupations are varied: they sell newspapers or fruit
and vegetables or cigarettes and candy; they shine shoes, they work
in the construction or restaurant sector. Most of them go to
school, four hours a day, five or six days a week depending on
whether or not the teachers went on strike. They learn the national
anthem, how to count and write. They are taught some history and
geography, and inculcated with the idea that their lifestyle is
predetermined and therefore they should not question it too much.
The working street children who go to work, do chores at home or
sleep when school lets out get no special treatment.

For these children who have forgotten what it is to be a child and
for all marginalized children, radio has the potential to be a
means of expression and creative learning; it is entertaining and
readily accessible.

This was the backdrop for a radio project that began last August in
the town of Loja, Ecuador. The children who took part were already
involved in a program for working street children run by CISOL
(Centro de Investigaciones Sociales de Loja). CISOL provides the
children with services such as street educators, a library, a
dining room and different learning and creative workshops, among
them, radio for and by children.

The aim was to give the youngsters the necessary tools so that
eventually they could plan and carry out their own radio broadcasts
and, in so doing, to foster development of expression, critical
thinking and research. They could also discuss what was important
to them and what interested them, while meeting their immediate
needs.

A number of children took part in the workshop. Among the topics
dealt with were locution, news, sound techniques, individual and
group interviews, dramatization and storytelling. The level of
participation, both direct and indirect, was very high and attested
to the children's great interest in this medium which gives them a
place in their environment's communications.

To produce the program entitled "Nuestra Voz" (Our Voice),
broadcast every three weeks, the children proceeded as follows:
planning of the program's main subject and definition of different
means to pursue; the actual production using interviews with the
children about the places they work; production of dramatizations
on everyday topics such as problems the working children encounter
with their clients; the negative influence of games such as
Nintendo; physical and psychological violence; problems of abuse or
alcoholism in the family, etc. The children also made up their own
stories as well as songs about the carnival or friendship
celebrations and sent greetings to their friends and families.
Generally, the attitude of adults to the project was very positive.
Many would often gather round the children who were doing
interviews in parks or markets.

Then came the process of editing the program with the help of two
or three child announcers and the cooperation of a local radio
station that lent the team its equipment. Last, an evaluation of
each broadcast was made with the children who had participated from
close up or not so close up.

The project concentrated mainly on the development of expression
and constructive criticism. This leads children to open up to the
environment they live in and to look for the causes and
consequences of situations that affect them directly. Moreover, in
radio programming for children, it is also essential to incorporate
an educational component in order to partly offset poor performance
and the school system's inability to adapt to these children's
reality.

The adult's role in these broadcasts is to be a catalyst, a guide,
a motivator. The basic work, however, should be in the hands of the
children, who have a lot more to say about this than people think.
The team of adults in charge of a children's program must be very
flexible in terms of moving around and timetables since children
who work have difficulty going to a radio station on a regular
basis.

A stable group of children is certainly the greatest obstacle to
circumvent, since marginal children's availability is extremely
variable and depends on a large number of factors.

Much effort has yet to be made in the area of communication for
children. Not only must it increase quantitatively but it must also
try to respond as completely as possible to a large number of needs
expressed by millions of children. What children have to say is
invaluable. It is an urgent matter to highlight the richness of
their spontaneity and ingenuousness, which are present even in a
world where the very small are forced to become adults long before
their time.

- Martine David and Manon Hogue

                    ..........................
   This article is from InteRadio, Vol. 6, No.3., the newsletter
  of AMARC, the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters.
      InteRadio is published in English, French and Spanish.

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