External evaluation of the Community Radio Stations Capacity

Background

For more than 30 years now, community radio stations, also called free or illegal radios, have emerged from peasant communities and outlying working-class districts in a context of steep inequity, extreme poverty, and exclusion.

The Government established 99 indigenous peoples’ radios (radios de pueblos originarios—RPOs) since 2006 (56 installed between 2014 and 2015 are not yet consolidated).

A new Law on Telecommunications changed the distribution of the radio spectrum into three equal parts:  one third for private-sector communication, one third for government communication, and one third for community and indigenous people’s communication.

During the last 30 years, The Radio Broadcasting Education and Production Centre (Centro de Educación y Producción Radiofónica—CEPRA supported community radios and provided skill training.

It saw an opportunity to build capacity of these new first-nations peoples radios (RPOs), as well as the already existing social community radio stations that had previously been marginalized from government support.

This was possible owing to a framework agreement between CEPRA and Bolivia’s Ministry of Communication and to a specific agreement with NPA for the project to implement “the Community Radio Stations Capacity Building Project so that these radio stations could exert a greater impact on the process of change in Bolivia from 2011 to 2015”.

Purpose/objective

Evaluating the implementation of “the Community Radio Stations Capacity Building Project so that these radio stations can exert a greater impact on the process of change in Bolivia from 2011 to 2015”, implemented by CEPRA with NPA cooperation.

• The project’s relevance in connection with the context and the role of social stakeholders in grassroots communication.
• Sustainability and gender equity approach.
• Reviewing the level of compliance with expected results and identifying future challenges to continue community radio capacity building.
• Identifying both progress achieved and weaknesses in the process to draw the lessons to be learned using a participatory approach with the various stakeholders involved in community radio broadcasting and the project and identifying future challenges.

Methodology

Participatory approach, with the involvement of the organizations that have ties with community and indigenous radio stations, trained communicators, CEPRA, the Ministry of Communication, commentators on grassroots communication.  In that respect, the methodological approach brings together both external evaluation and self-evaluation.

The process lasted one and a half months.  Two workshops were conducted (one at the beginning and the other to examine results), with the attendance of about 45 persons (communicators, organizations, and CEPRA team), as well as individual surveys aimed at 40 communicators, visits to six radio stations (two for each region), interviews with trainers, the CEPRA team, civil servants of the Ministry of Communication (including the former minister), and interviews with specialists in grassroots radio communication.

Key findings

The evaluation confirmed the relevance and importance of the Project.  It felt that the Project did contribute significantly to the community and first-nation radio stations capacity building process.

Training: The Project contributed to technical/technological and political training of community radio communicators. 

Nevertheless, there are training aspects that could not be put into practice: a) communicators feel that they cannot as yet solve technical problems that arise.
b) Although some radio stations have made efforts to innovate their programming, it still is deficient.

Working in networks: The Project supported the establishment of three regional networks and one national network, which has made it possible to make progress in broadcasting the viewpoints of grassroots sectors and first-nation peoples using an intercultural approach.

Although radio stations have established executive boards for these networks, there still is a need to boost ties with grassroots organisations to ensure their political and also economic sustainability. The evaluation makes recommendations to be taken into consideration for the next phase.

Recommendations

NPA deems that the recommendations made by the evaluation may be useful to plan the project in its next phase (2016-2019).

In a preliminary conversation with CEPRA, priority was given to focusing on three recommendations:

• Building up the quality of the programming.
• Building up the ties between the community radio station networks and the indigenous peasant organisations at the regional level.
• Contributing to the search for technical and technological solutions that are more closely available to the radio stations, for example, by providing intensive training to the team of each network.

In March, a planning workshop shall be held, with the attendance of the executive boards of the three community radio stations networks, as well as the attendance of delegations from the organisations.

During this phase, greater emphasis will also be placed on sustainability, as well as autonomy from CEPRA and the project. Synergy with other institutions involved in the subject (Ministry of Communication, and other cooperation organisations).