Promoting environment-friendly radio

Her passion for children of Africa inspired Kristine Pearson, Chief Executive of Freeplay Foundation, to conceive a robust, self-powered radio called the Lifeline radio. The community radio, hailed to be the first one ever tailored for the humanitarian sector, is bringing waves of change to millions of sub-Saharan Africans, who can now make better choices and decisions through radio access. Pearson has won numerous awards, most recently, the TIME magazine's Heroes of the Environment for 2007 in recognition of the most innovative and influential protectors of the planet. In an interview with GKP, Kristine reveals her plans on improvising and expanding the Lifeline radio to other countries like India and promoting the use renewable energy and the importance of power to the quality of life of the poor. Could you give us an introduction on the Foundation that you work for and what it does? The Freeplay Foundation which was established in 1998 was initially set up to provide sustainable access and information to the poorest across Africa through the provision of wind-up and solar-powered radio. We have been able to design and distribute radio that is specifically designed for the humanitarian sector called the Lifeline radio and in addition, we are moving into other applications and other technologies, which include foot-powered generator as an income creation tool for rural woman to charge cell phones, LED ball lights and other devices. Next, we will be moving in a very big way into the renewable and clean energy lighting space. Freeplay Foundation has distributed some 150,000 of this Lifeline radios that you mentioned and it is currently serving an estimated 6 million people. Is that correct? Very conservatively, 6 million at the very low end because we work on a group listening model of 30-40 listeners. At the higher end, there are many radios, 30,000-40,000 that are being used in distant education programme. So you might have 4-5 classrooms a day anywhere from 40-60 children. One radio could easily reach 300 young learners. Why did you focus on radio as a key part of your work? Let's put radio into context; nothing comes close to radio as a communication tool in the developing world and that is especially true in Africa. Only 4, maybe 5 percent of people in Africa have access to email. Radio can reach anybody who is isolated, who is not literate, who lives in poverty and in really remote areas. It is through AM/FM and shortwave signals that radio is able to reach anybody provided they have access. And that is what we provide - this missing link. Because in rural areas, there is simply no electricity or very limited electrical supplies. And the high cost batteries make it prohibitive to be bought by the poor. And these radios are environmentally-friendly? They are very environmentally-friendly. I think most people don't realise to what extent disposable batteries are a problem. The ones in Africa and most developing countries are very highly toxic, full of mercury and lead. Billions are produced each year. Very few are recycled appropriately and rechargeables are simply too expensive. So we are offering clean energy solutions that are renewable. What are the challenges that you face? We have many challenges. One of them is the protectionist nature of African economies. There is a lot of work that needs to be done in upscaling and capacity building, custom excises and treasury as well as departments of countries. Also anything in Africa is challenging because the infrastructure needs great improvement. So we work on a partnership-based model and try to work on a public-private partnership. If we are distributing radios into rural areas, we would look into consumer product companies who already have vehicles going to the same areas. It might be Unilever, Coca Cola or other organisations that are delivering. That's the challenge. Do you find these challenges specific to Africa or do you encounter them in other parts of the world too? Are partnerships the best way of achieving what you want to do? Yes, our principal place of work is Sub-Saharan Africa. And we don't raise funds to build on civil society vehicles or hire staff. What we do is we work on a partnership basis where we collaborate with local partners. We would train and build their staff capacity in the distribution, use and care of the radios. We would also get involved in the formation and managing of listening groups so that people can discuss the programming, manage the information and, often, feed it back to the programmers. But we will never just drive into a community and give the radio away. That is not going to solve anything. There's an entire process which is very much community-based, where the community decides who is going to be the guardian of the radio. We are also looking at advancing the Lifeline radio to make it mp3-enabled. It can be a very exciting development because not only would you be able to record programmes in advance and play them back later but you can also receive pre-recorded materials which will be terrific for up-scaling teachers, health professionals and agriculture extension workers. Can you tell us a little bit about your main target groups within the communities? So you favour the women and the children in particular and do you think radio has a particular role in gender empowerment? Our principal beneficiary groups are those who would be considered to be most vulnerable. So by definition, in Sub- Saharan Africa, those would be orphans and other vulnerable children. According to various estimates, somewhere between 40-50 million children are orphaned in Sub-Saharan Africa. These children are often isolated and dependent on adults. They may or may not trust for information or may not have information that is reliable. So, we are really focused on orphans, rural women groups, refugees and people who are ill. And we are very gender sensitive. We insist that at least 50 percent of the listening group leaders and beneficiaries of the radio are women and in some cases, it is nearly 100 percent. You have often been quoted as saying the Lifeline radio is the first and only radio ever designed and manufactured specifically for the humanity sector. Would you like to share your inspiration for this radio and what you contributed to the design? This radio is really an inspiration from the orphaned children in Rwanda. In early 2001, I was conducting some research on the impact of previous Freeplay Foundation radio models that wind in one direction and would break if they were wound anti-clock wise. And I was really deeply moved and touched by what these young heads of households between 12-18 were saying to me. Contrary to what most people think they would listen to, it was actually the news they wanted to hear the most. Listening to the news gave them information they could trust. They told me that radio helped ease that isolation and helped them to sleep at night. So I became absolutely impassioned with the idea that there had to be a radio specifically designed for children living on their own and for distant education initiatives. We were very fortunate to have won the first Tech Museum Award in 2001 in Silicon Valley. We applied the seed funding to create a design brief for the Lifeline Radio, which actually came from orphaned children, mainly from adolescent girls who said things like that if the radio was shaped like handbags, they could carry it into the field, that black was the wrong colour, that the antenna needed to be redesigned. Then we had the Freeplay Foundation energy engineers make me a prototype and took that back into the field. Thirty two running changes were made and we launched the radio in April 2003 to Rwandian refugees living in Tanzanian camps. Would you like to share with us any other new innovations you are going to be including in the future? In addition, the next area that we are moving into in a very big way is renewable lighting which will have many educational benefits such as for children, who now try to do their homework with candle light or kerosene, which is unimaginable but they do it. This lighting would make it possible for children to study at night, for teachers to read newspapers at night and for listening groups to meet at night. It would also increase greater security while eliminating the very real hazard of shack fires from candle burns and the health hazard from kerosene. Can you make a prediction of the technological innovations that will evolve in the field of community radio? New innovations are happening all the time in community radio. It is wonderful the way that ITC is now creating Internet products that withstand harsh conditions that are easy to fix and repair. Nine years ago, I can't think of an ICT intervention in the rural area that was actually very successful. There have been a lot of lessons learnt. I think the potential of cell phones with community radio and radio stations has yet to be fully explored. There are enormous potential for call-in programmes and cell phones to be used by health professionals. We envisaged renewable lighting to be used by midwives, for example, to be able to use her renewable energy torch to recharge her cell phones so that she will be able to call a doctor or a hospital in the rural area in case there are complications at birth. That is only one of a myriad of examples that we can think of. Are you looking to focus beyond Africa anytime soon? We have a lot of approaches especially for India now that the country has liberalised their community radio licensing requirements. They seem to have a paucity of handsets that don't require batteries and batteries are real public enemies. They leak into garbage, they leak into fuel, compost and soil, and are highly toxic and dangerous. So, we are looking into India and we will see where that takes us. Are you getting the appropriate responses from various groups in India? We have been approached by numerous groups in India. Obviously, this will require investment because we don't think importing our products presently or manufacturing with license from China is a solution. Are you looking to build multi-stakeholder partnerships to enable your goals in India? Absolutely. I think products that are appropriate in Africa are not necessarily going to be appropriate in India. Our approaches are very bottom-up driven. The first step that we would take is to identify partners who are working at grassroots level with women, conduct needs assessment and from there, create prototypes that are vigorously field-tested and then go into manufacture. You have been recently named as TIME Magazine's Hero of the Environment 2007. How do you feel about this award and are you going to use it to promote the work that Freeplay Foundation and you are undertaking? It is a great award indeed and certainly a surprise. Of course, we will use it as a way to promote other solutions to toxic battery to promote different methods of renewable energy and the importance of power to the quality of life of the poor. Would you like to share a personal message with our viewers? Buy rechargeable batteries! They will offer you a thousand times more giveback than a simple disposable battery and when you are done with it dispose it properly. Source: GKP

User comments

 Printable version