Pangani FM
Pangani FM has become one of UZIKWASA’s strongest media tool, reinforcing every other component of our intervention package. The radio covers Pangani District, parts of Zanzibar, and will soon reach most of Tanga region. Through live broadcasting of community events and through interactive radio programs Uongozi wa Mguso (Leadership that touches) Sauti ya Mwanamke (Women’s Voice) Leaders Talk and Youth Talk, Pangani FM provides a platform for communities to engage in a continuous dialogue about pressing social issues.
Training Grassroots Journalists
Pangani FM’s professional journalists and media trainer alongside UZIKWASA facilitators have been building the capacity of young people from Pangani through a unique training that combines basic journalism and reflective leadership training. By the end of 2016, almost 70 young people completed their training and many of them have become highly competent professionals. That is why we are now making efforts to develop our successful training program into an accredited media training center.
Multimedia Campaigns
The messaging power of media has been an integral part of UZIKWASA’s programming for over a decade. But we don’t just distribute films and literature with positive messages in the hopes that something will stick. We use our intimate knowledge of the communities we work with to tell their stories on the screen, over the radio and in print. Using local actors, shooting on location in Pangani District, and writing context-centered content, our communities quite literally see themselves reflected in stories that in turn make them reflect on the social problems faced by their neighbors, friends and family members.
Our latest film, AISHA, tells the story of a girl who is gang raped as retributive violence by men who think she’s too proud. Aisha’s story, told from the perspective of the victim herself, asks audiences to deeply reflect on victim blaming, and on their own roles in the community that allows this to happen. The film also shows why systems so often fail to prosecute perpetrators. Film showings in every village in Pangani start a dialogue that continues on dedicated interactive radio programs on Pangani FM and in people’s homes in the pages of illustrated AISHA books. From concept to execution to distribution, our films, theatre, children’s literature and radio programming are focused on the communities we know best.
UZIKWASA offers special AISHA Film workshops targeting development practitioners and gender activists to reflect and surface their own perceptions related to GBV in order to work with communities more consciously and more effectively.