Since 1995, Rupantar’s popular media and folk theatre program had revived folk and cultural heritage to involve grass root citizen of the South-Western region. The program aims to connect culture and development for communicating social messages to rural masses. The program focuses on grassroots theatre approach for development called development communication in short Dev Com method. Dev Com method depicts community life, cultural, beliefs, and attitudes with development issues related to child marriage, domestic violence, sexual harassments, community learning, violence against women, human rights and more within a cultural framework. The program carries out interactive communication through stage performances with target audience.

Our process of performances starts with location section then we disseminate social messages performance through advertisement. Our social messages and performances depends on communities’ demand mostly Pot songs. The interaction with audiences are carried out through quiz competition, award and leaflet distribution. At the end of each performance, feedback is taken on the learning’s from performances of a social messages.

Strategic approach

• Addressing need based communication
• Clarify the idea before communication
• Examine the purpose of each communication
• Consider the access and the local context at the time of communication
• Collective and target group participation
• Being mindful about the issue full period of communication
• Using credible actors and action
• Identifying potential barriers
• Inclusivity

Our current project

Uphold community voice to public health-related policy and practice in Bangladesh and Nepal

It is an exchange project involving 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 goal of the project is to transfer knowledge and skill to strengthen and deliver better services to local community. The objective is to send and receive young people on work placements between partners in different countries to learn and share knowledge and skills.

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.

Our reach

• Beneficiaries 7,298,885 with 3,967,385 direct and indirect 3,331,500 beneficiaries. (The numbers are collected by the counted of radio listeners)

Our stakeholders

•  Rupantar, Bangladesh as coordinating partner and AMARC-AP, Nepal as Partner organization.

Partner

• Norwegian Agency for Exchange Cooperation (NOREC)

Radio program for community development

In 2009, The Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) in collaboration with Rupantar, as lead partner has been promoting  meaningful, relevant and appropriate use of media to serve in education and training. Since 2019, Rupantar has been involved with radio program. Rupantar’s radio program, or radio show broadcasts various social message content on radio. This can be one-time production, or periodically recurring in series based on a subject. We follow rigorous steps in developing a radio program content for community. We also provide support to our thematic program areas based on requests.

From July 2022 till June 2023, 39 Community radio programs were aired reaching 5 million people on various topics.

Overall key achievements

The program has held 400 performances on comprehensive counter trafficking to address human trafficking in Bangladesh, created awareness on expanded program on immunization (EPI) vaccination program supported by UNICEF in Khulna city corporation with 41 performances. Through promoting peace and justice program 16 performances were carried out. Our community awareness program on eye health held 14 Pot song performances. Through collective responsibility, action and accountability for improving nutrition (CRAAIN)- we held 319 performances. We carried out 33 special performances on various activities with an overall reach 168,666 of those 85,237 female and 79,425 males. 100% achievement achieved during the project period.