Radio First for Pakistani Trainees

Secondary school pupils from a rural part of northern Pakistan’s Chitral region have begun making the region’s first youth-produced radio programme as part of IWPR’s Open Minds project.

About 40 students from all eight of the project’s schools and madrassas in Chitral have been involved in the production of six weekly radio programmes so far, broadcast on Radio Pakistan Chitral, a state-run FM station. Each programme is one hour long and includes features and news reports. 

Students have also held on-air discussions covering local issues, such electricity shortages, female education and environmental concerns.

Farid Ahmed, a producer at Radio Pakistan Chitral, said “the participating students have shown good ability in terms of producing quality content”.

Open Minds students receive a training course in their schools, and then go on to write stories or work in radio studios once they have learnt the basics of journalism.

IWPR works with 16 local journalists to deliver journalism training to 42 schools across Pakistan.

Two supplements consisting of Open Minds trainees’ journalism have also been published in two national dailies, the Jang and The News. These supplements will become a regular feature of the newspapers thanks to an agreement IWPR has signed with them. About 40 students also published articles in other local and national media including the national daily Azadi and Chitral’s weeklies Chitral Times, Chitral Nama, and Awaze Chitral.

Students in Swat also published several stories, after a late start to training because of the summer 2009 army operation which saw many civilians fleeing the area. Their stories covered issues including damaged schools and health facilities in the wake of the operation, and the needs of the large displaced population who have recently returned to Swat.

In the north-western city of Peshawar, female madrassa students wrote about the adverse affects of extremism. A student of the Jamia Islamia Kosht school produced a short article on human rights which was published in Awaze Chitral.

“The students now feel empowered to write on various issues, and also [have begun to] criticise the school management for not being supportive of students’ academic problems”
Ali Jamat, head teacher

“We must demand our rights such as the establishment of female educational institutions in the area, but the demand should not be aggressive or [carried out] in a violent way,” she wrote.

IWPR has signed agreements with various broadcast organisations to increase the exposure available to project trainees. Students will make programmes for the national private TV channel News One, and FM 91 radio in Karachi.

Articles are also making a real impact. Government officials installed electricity in a northern Pakistan school just two days after students published a story criticising the lack of power in their high school.

Zahid Mahmood and Nisar Ahmed, 15-year-old students at Government High School Booni in Pakistan’s Chitral region, published the article in the Chitral Times.

“In the modern age of the twenty first century, the school does not have electricity and students cannot use the computers and internet facility provided by IWPR,” they wrote.

Officials of the local office of the Water and Power Development Authority, WAPDA, a national body run by Pakistan’s federal government, contacted the school’s head teacher Ali Jamat to discuss the problem. Electricity was installed in the school within two days.

Jamat said this outcome had had a dramatic effect on other students. “The students now feel empowered to write on various issues, and also [have begun to] criticise the school management for not being supportive of students’ academic problems,” he said.