The diversity of material that our community needs, and needs to create, is enormous.
The children need content that can ramp up their reading and arithmetic skills, they
also need programs to assist them in improving their English speaking skills. The women in
the villages are just as keen on health programs as they are on a daily hour of spiritual music
to play while they are feeding the buffaloes, washing the clothes, and making dung-cakes. The men
are interested in job opportunities, information on what is happening in and around Gurgaon, and the latest cricket scores!
All this can only happen through partnerships and content sharing. That’s the only way this will work.
What we create, we share. For free. What someone else creates, we broadcast. For free. End result:
a good thing gets better when it spreads around. And, everyone focuses on what they are good at. So,
if it is Jagori we talk to, then they have done piles and piles of work on child rights, women’s rights etc.
Why replicate it? Except of course create fresh content from within the community, which can go right back
to Jagori to spread through all their other channels. If it is PrathamBooks, then why not leverage their
strength in content for children, and the reach of our medium (radio), and come up with something can go
back to Pratham and all its partners — audio books on air. Already there are organizations that have created
radio content for teaching spoken English, which has been offered free of cost to us. We may be able to use it as is.
Higher chances are that we will have to localize it for the Haryanvi population, but it still gives us a matrix to work with.
In addition of course, we create all our field content, focus on capacity building within
the community, keep set-up costs low so that we don’t threaten sustainability, and stay on ground and grounded.
