Building Community Media Centers In Rural Areas

Donor: the European Union
Partners: the Civic Initiatives Center (Perechyn)
Timeframe: March 2007 – August 2008
Project Area:

• Perechyn district, Zakarpattya oblast
• Mena district, Chernigiv oblast
• Chernechchyna village, Okhtyrka dixtrict, Sumy oblast.

Project Budget: 840 900 UAH.

The Objective: Development of democratic dialog in rural areas through community media centers building and support. The Project is to increase rural population capacity to state their position about various social problems. The Project is also to work out rurally adopted mechanism of local initiatives information support, and to provide vulnerable people efficient participation in public life of the village or district.

Short description and results: The Project target group included vulnerable people informal leaders and activists in three Ukrainian regions selected (Perechyn district, Zakarpattya oblast; Mena district, Chernigiv oblast; and Chernechchina village, Okhtyrka dixtrict, Sumy oblast). The Project has essentially activated vulnerable groups representatives in communities participating. The Project has involved from 450 to 500 vulnerable groups activists.

One of the most important objectives of the Project was to attract remote rural population to participation in public and cultural life by introducing effective community media use nd comprehension. Media centers building has provided certain people and organizations with community media use skills and resources, i.e. radio, video and photography as information transmission and community development means. This approach has helped vulnerable people from remote rural areas be heard, and it has facilitated democratic dialog on the whole.

During project implementation period there were 3 community's needs researches and 3 public meetings (1 for each community). Within the Project there were 44 trainings involving 186 participants. During two years of the Project implementation rural activists have published 22000 newspaper copies and 2500 leaflets. The Project implementation experience has been reflected and summed up in community media handbook “Community Media in Ukraine” published by 1500 copies.

Products:

Community Media in Ukraine, handbook