Voice of community empowerment Chiang Mai , Thailand
Inoperation since April 13 , 2003 , FM 99 MHz Community Radio is community-owned and and governed station that broadcasts 17 hours a day, 119 hours a week, without holiday. The purpose of the station is to empower the local people in the listening area to particpate in the sustainable development of the community. Thestation's slogan is Two-way communications creates strong civil society. Its mission is to "promote local culture through relevant programmes in tradition, local talent in music, praise and education." Programming also includes local news in an effort to bolster a sense of belonging, identity, and pride among community members. Another purpose of the project is to encourage gender sensitivity and to challenge stereotypes and forms of abuse. No advertisement is to be recognized in this station policy.
This radio programme consists in current affairs features or dramas, each of which is between 5 and 15 minutes in length. Approximately 60 to 70% of the station's programing is in local language, Lanna ; the rest is in Thai, hilltribes and English. The programming consists in 60% talk and 40% music (50% of which is Northern music). The station managers, presenters, guests, and informationcontributors are members of the community. Feedback on programming is collected from the community in to increase the relevance and effectiveness of the content. The station also seeks to entertain through music, games, contests, storytelling, jokes, and dedications. At times, members of the community come directly, unannounced, to the station. Thus, groups of workers, housewives may provide a spontaneous discussion of problems like environment or health that are about to occur. Topics include direct,participatory democracy, community culture, health promotion, local government, human rights, and sustainable community development. It is local content and edutainment in nature. The station also conducts live public awareness talk show/call-in programmes. Other programmes focus on school governing bodies, voter education, health, childern, life quality.
The policy of the station is to promote local-local dialogus, to strengthen community action, to promote community culture, to provide edutainment, to take no advertisement, to promote local dialect, and to promote local wisdom. The stationplans to work with the other community stations in the province as network to produce pre-recorded programmes (which are mostly in Northern dialect) on marginalizes society, gender, disability, women, children, crime prevention, and health promotion. The station producers gather at one of the five stations' studios to produce the items ; stations then localize the content at the time of broadcast through guests/interviews drawn from their respective areas.
