Read about Participatory Radio Campaigns in new book
Date Posted: October 29th, 2012
One of the key successes of the “African Farm Radio Research Initiative” (AFRRI), Farm Radio International’s recently completed action-research project, was the development and evaluation of an approach to radio broadcasting called the Participatory Radio Campaign (PRC).
A PRC is a carefully designed, interactive, participatory series of radio programs which aims to advise, engage and equip farmers to make fully-informed decisions on adopting improved agricultural practices. The interactive, farmer-centred approach facilitates and broadcasts engaging conversations, provides opportunities for dialogue and storytelling, and offers a place where disagreements, doubts, and questions can be raised. PRCs use repetition, reinforcement, and staged sequencing of information to greatly improve the prospects for sustained adoption. By continuing over an extended period of time, PRCs support listeners to not only understand the benefits of the methods promoted, but to adopt and integrate these practices into their daily lives and regular farming activities.
Kevin Perkins, Farm Radio International’s Executive Director, recently summarized these and other findings in one chapter of a new book called “Learning with community media,” published by the Commonwealth of Learning.
To learn more about the PRC approach, read the chapter entitled “Participatory Radio Campaigns and Small-Scale Farming Innovations: Promoting Learning and Uptake,” which can be downloaded from:
http://www.col.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/pub_LearningWithCM_ch_1.pdf
