Examples
Empowerment Projects Radio School klipp+klang
The radio school klipp+klang with it’s partner radios has long experience with empowerment radio projects, in which radio work is used to foster not only radio skills, but also to train skills that are useful in other parts in life, like media literacy, and personal competences like group work, to be articulate or the strengthening of self-confidence. The first projects were run together with Radio LoRa, the target groups were woman and migrant women and the different communities in the neighbourhood Grünau in Zürich. The current projects are:
Vitamin B: In this project radio journalism – especially skills like research, interview and networking – is used to help workless people with mostly migration background in finding a job. The project is run as a 14-day course, in the end the group produces a radio show. The courses are financed by different offices of integration, who support the individual participants by paying their course fees.
Redaktion Sichtpunkt is an education- and job-empowering-project for especially blind and visually impaired people. Twice a year an editorial board of 5–7 blind, visually impaired and seeing persons produces a radio show which is aired on most community radios in the German part of Switzerland. Topics are for example how blind and visually impaired persons receive art, or with what means they participate in politics. The aim of the show is to talk about concerns of blind and visually impaired persons. Trainers and courses on different topics of radio work support the group. Several persons of the editorial board are also working as interns in the project coordination. The project is mainly funded by the Swiss state, but also by privat foundation.
Radio loco-motivo is a project for people with psychiatric experience. In a monthly show on Radio Bern RaBe, a group of people with psychiatric experience, experts from the field, e.g. caretaker in hospitals, and kinsman of patients broadcast reportages and reports about psychiatric but also other topics. Also non-journalistic forms like poems and other text are part of the show. The group is supported by trainers, but the aim is to make them able to work on their own eventually. This project is empowering on very basic level, for example some of the participants have never worked with a computer before, or have very little media literacy competence. The project is financed by the Swiss state and private foundations.
Happy radio: this is a radio project for people with cognitive disorders. Twice a year they produce together with trainers a show on Radio LoRa. The radio show is part of the education programm of the organisations that organise education for people with cognitive disorders, therefore we work tightly together with these institutions.
Knastradio: Radio with imprisoned people. This project was run twice, once with adults (2009), and recently with juvenile criminals who were in a semi-closed institution. For the radio show who was produce at Radio X in Basel, they were allowed to leave the institution. The project was started by two students, the radio school did support the two in project management and teaching radio skills.