Rupantar’s exchange program is a community radio journalism between Bangladesh and Nepal. The program initiated a cross-country network of community broadcasters for involving and increasing community radios with a mission to promote public health facility as part of human right. The joint initiative is carried out by AMARC Asia-Pacific and Rupantar with the support of the Norwegian Agency for Exchange Cooperation (NOREC).

Key achievement

An opportunity had been opened to learn, be acquainted with global partners, enhance online skills in developing programs to Open Distance Learning (ODL).  Extended format has been used for radio programs, audio-visual programs, and webinars reaching community people engaging health experts, policymakers, local leaders, and authorities to improve community-level public health. Scopes has been created for developing linkages between community people and policymakers for contributing to national-level policy advocacy for improving public health services in Bangladesh and Nepal. Community Radio Public Health Network (CR-PHN) has been formed. The network is an active platform to minimize the disparities in policy-level decisions on public health.

Our current project

The exchange project involves Bangladeshi youth volunteers from Community Radio Stations (CRs) exchanging experiences and skills of Bangladesh public health facility in Nepal for 14 months including training and follow-up. Similarly, Nepali youth volunteers exchanging experiences of Nepal’s public health facility experience in Bangladesh. The project aims to build knowledge of Community Learning Program (CLP) in health, enhance institutional training capacity for up scaling CLP in respective countries. The project helps to develop training manuals of CLP in local languages. Upon return, respective countries youth volunteers utilize the leanings as best practices to improve respective local CRs on health issues. One of the notable side of exchange project is the leaning of native language. The project is implemented in rounds and community people is our stakeholders.

The first round of first phase of exchange project started on 1 February 2017 and it phased out successful through completing round 1, 2 and 3. The second phase of round 3 started on 1 February, 2023 and will end on 31 March, 2024.