Village Voices – from Androy to the National 2013 Election

Moving forward since last year, much has happened with ALT’s Village Voices for Development radio project…

The VVD Project undertook an evaluation of its impacts on local communities between August and September 2012 with excellent results ( the study will be up on the ALT website soon) and Adsum Foundation funded an extension to the project from October in order to maintain vital production and broadcast while the ALT Mg team awaited news from the EC on funding to adapt VVD for the national elections communications campaign.

The ALT Mg team filmed testimony from a member of the community who had experienced a life changing event thanks to the VVD broadcasts – see http://www.andrewleestrust.org/voices.htm

During October to December, as well as tackling land rights, public security and justice topics,  the ALT MG team began producing and broadcasting programmes about the 2013 elections for audiences in the Androy region, working with the radio listening groups and partner radio stations who have participated in VVD since last February

The elections is a new subject for the project’s team as well as for the listeners. Focus groups with villagers revealed that beneficiaries had insufficient information or understanding to fully participate in the  process (eg voter registration, census etc ). 

Accordingly two programmes were produced in October in order to provide information and prepare listeners so they could participate in debates and discussions, and enable them to pose questions – including for a future phone in debate.

One programme explained the CENIT (Commission Electorale Nationale Independent pour la Transition) a description of  its agencies and activities, and the electoral process already underway (eg voter enrollment: -a definition, the persons responsible, and the procedures) . A second programme focused on the national Census of voters.

Feedback  suggested that listeners were interested in the topic; the programmes were well received and well understood and more programming was required.

Phone in with the CENIT rep in Ambovombe

A radio phone-in was then produced on December 14 at Radio CACTUS Ambovombe.  An invitation was sent to the Regional Manager of CENIT Ambovombe, Mr. John Emanuel RASOLONDRAIBE; who agreed to participate and answer questions from listeners. The   phone-in lasted 1 hour and questions focused principally on :

• The exact date of the election; will the election really take place?
• An explanation request for the conduct of the Census in the District of Ambovombe Androy, specifically regarding the deficiencies found in the method of carrying out the steps of the census. Indeed, there were cases such as non-completion of door to door surveys, use of a predefined list of the population during the census and visits to the population, many households were not visited by the census agents. All these were exposed during the radio phone-in.
• The request for clarification and precision on the making of national Identity cards.
• The boundaries of the validity of the electoral card, in other words, is it still valid if the person moves to another location.
• Questions on the minimum age to vote (eg if a person has not yet had 18 years old during the census period but only reaches this age some time before the date of the election, can that person participate to the election? What should she do?)
• The definition of CENIT and its role
• The work already done by the CENIT and further activities

Value of the VVD Extension Phase – Lessons Learnt

ALT is enormously grateful to Adsum Foundation for supporting three additional months to the pilot phase.

A number of lessons have been learnt during this extension and, importantly, the listeners have been able to revisit themes that interest them and which required more work, exchange and programme production : – land tenure and inheritance issues, and public security. They were also able to begin to get a grasp of entirely new themes and information that is essential to their participation in forthcoming 2013 elections and in their judicial system locally.

The team also identified some key lessons for election programming:

1) To enable listeners to be comfortable with discussing the elections topic, the Project needs to start the radio phone-in with an introduction or a presentation which can serve as a guide for discussion.

2) The local radio station team also need special training on this specific topic (i.e the Election, the CENIT etc ) in order to better assist the phone in and to provide coverage of the elections 

3) Radio phone-ins on issues concerning Elections must be continuous and evolve according to the context to assure continuity of interest for listeners and to help them better assimilate information and key messages. Also to enable them to better express their questions and concerns.

A further two programmes were produced about the CENIT and elections which reiterated

interviewing listeners

and further reminded listeners of key information shared during the radio phone-in of December.

EC Funded National Elections Communciation Campaign