Dialogue with the Grassroots

The project uses the Internet and radio to link a well-defined online community and communities at the grassroots, along the following lines:

1. Radio Sagarmatha staff and MF staff together identify potential issues for discussion. As of this writing, these issues have included mountain identity, conflicts related to eco-tourism, the building of a new roadway, and relocation (forced? voluntary?) of the communities living inside the National Park.
2. These ideas are posted on MF email lists, with the request that subscribers provide input in the form of related questions to be asked, information on the issue, names of experts in that field, and the like.
3. MF staff search MF's Online Library to provide further information on the issue to Radio Sagarmatha producers.
4. Input from MF subscribers and MF staff is sent to the radio producers to incorporate into their research.
5. Radio producers go out into the field and pose questions to local hill and mountain people in the local language, recording voices and reactions on the issue. Photographs are also taken for the Internet-based component of the project (see below).
6. The programme is then produced and broadcast (on Friday mornings, from 7:30 to 7:45, on FM radio 102.4 MHz) in the local language.
7. The content of the programme, including the voices of the grassroots people, is translated and adapted for MF discussion lists and posted in English.
8. MF discussion list subscribers are asked to respond to the posting.
9. Responses of the MF community are broadcast in the next programme by Radio Sagarmatha.
10. Other responses from the radio audience are posted on MF discussion lists.
11. A summary of the dialogue is provided on MF discussion lists at the end of this cycle.

To broaden the reach of this programme to those who are not members of the MF network, a Dialogue with the Grassroots page has been set up on the Mountain Forum website. For each radio programme broadcast to date, a dedicated web page details the issue and provides context, shares photographs and words of local people providing their perspectives on the topic, presents perspectives from experts, and offers a wrap-up. Links to each the radio script in PDF format (Nepali version) are also provided, as are as links to related information (e.g., alternative tourism models that directly address conservation as well as local development concerns).

Agriculture, Environment, Globalisation.

MF is made up primarily of academics, students, experts, professionals, and policy makers across the region and the world. As of August 2004, the number of total subscriptions across all the lists that this network of networks manages stood at over 16,000. One reason for what organisers describe as rapid growth in the number of participants is that technology has allowed members to interact with each other in a virtual way. However, as many members of the community have expressed through feedback exercises, that same technology has also limited communication to only those people who are literate (especially in the English language), and who have computers and Internet connections. This limitation led MF to seek solutions to this problem of inclusiveness (or the lack of it).

Described by MF as "the oldest independent community broadcasting station of South Asia, Radio Sagarmatha reaches out to people at the grassroots level in 8 districts of Nepal. In MF's words, "Being a community radio station, the voices of people are consistently brought into the fold of the radio programmes through interviews in the field."

In the first phase, organisers are planning to produce 8-10 such "Dialogue with the Grassroots" programmes. If the model works, and a true dialogue is established, they we hope to scale it up and take it to the next level.