The way a community radio is organised and managed impacts its ability to actually facilitate empowerment, community mobilisation, engagement and ultimately positive change.
The organisation of a radio station sets the framework for its effective and productive management. It also reflects what it is that the community wants to achieve – and how it wants to achieve it. The starting point is therefore a clear and common formulation of the overall dream and vision. The organisation and management will then spell out how to get there.
The way a community radio is organised and managed impacts its ability to actually facilitate empowerment, community mobilisation, engagement and ultimately positive change.
The organisation of a radio station sets the framework for its effective and productive management. It also reflects what it is that the community wants to achieve – and how it wants to achieve it. The starting point is therefore a clear and common formulation of the overall dream and vision. The organisation and management will then spell out how to get there.
The dreams of the community(ies) become apparent and can be formulated during the community mapping stage. The vision of how the community radio station can support the fulfilment of this dream can ideally be introduced as an element in the formulation of a strategic plan or framework, which step-by-step spells out the role of the radio in the community, and how to most effectively build on the nature and capacity of the institutions and people there. Developing a fully-fledged strategic plan for a community radio is usually not the first step in the process of getting organised – but a very good tool when on air, and when some of the requirements and routines, and immediate successes and challenges are becoming known.
After the first community mapping has taken place (see elsewhere on this site) and the many communities within the community are identified, the initial installation and organising group can be formed and the general community mobilisation can be facilitated by the coach and mobiliser. At this point it is important to begin shaping the framework of the community radio as an organism within the community: which will be the different organs of the radio? how will it be connected to the community? what will be the different roles and functions of each organ? This important discussion is crucial at this point. Not only will it form the basis of future long-term ownership of the radio station by the entire community, it will also provide guidance in relation to the profile and capacities of the different people to fill these functions. Only rarely will all capacities be fully present in the community at this early stage. The process of community radio organisation will thus also form an important step to identify capacity gaps and thus guide the capacity strengthening efforts that will be needed during the following stages of development.
As with most other questions and issues around the gestation and creation of a community radio station, its organisation, profile, policies, technical set-up and programming, and management can take numerous forms and shapes. These depend on the external and internal environments such as the legal framework: who can own a community radio? The tradition and interest of the community: how do we do things in this community? And the local capacity and experience: how can we make it work, building on the resources we have?
While some communities choose for their station to be modelled on either public or commercial radio traditions, there are examples where organisational and management forms have been geared to match the community development needs. To do so, a station needs to orient itself to a number of fundamental functions to be provided by the organisation of a community radio. These functions are illustrated in the model below.
This functional structure centres on the fact that a community radio, by definition, is a radio of, by, for and about the community. Therefore, the organisation must grow up from the community and end up in the community, as the generic organisation chart below proposes: At the bottom the community provides all of the (volunteer) community radio programme producers, and at the top it is the community making up the ultimate decision making body, the (annual) general assembly. The organisation that on a day-to-day basis gets the radio on air is everything that can be found in-between.