BRAZIL: ‘Cyberelas’ Bring Internet to Women’s Radio Stations

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 4 2002 (IPS) - Fátima Santágata, who runs a community radio station in one of the most remote parts of Brazil’s Amazon jungle, travelled an entire day by boat, more than 170 kms in taxi, and several hours by plane to receive the computer and training she was awarded by the Brazilian Network of Women in Radio.

Santágata’s Jagube Radio station was one of the 13 winners of the ”Cyberelas” contest through which the Network, made up of 450 women who use community radio and a gender perspective to inform and promote the development of local populations, is attempting to make a leap towards incorporating the use of the latest communication technologies.

The 13 radio stations selected by the Cyberelas – or ”on-line Cinderellas” – project have been furnished with computers, training, and six months of Internet connection.

Santágata, whose Jagube Radio station operates in the Céu (Sky) de Mapiá community of 1,180 people – made up of 500 residents of the town itself and 680 others who live in the surrounding tropical forest – in the northwestern Brazilian state of Amazonas set out on her long trek to pick up her prize in Rio de Janeiro in early October.

After two weeks of courses, she started on the long journey back, pleased with the new resources that would give a new dimension to her radio station, which broadcasts information and music to the people of Céu de Mapiá for three hours a day, ”or up to eight hours on special days.”

Pauiní, the Amazonas municipality where the community is located, was identified in the last census, carried out in 2000, as the area with the highest level of illiteracy in Brazil: more than 80 percent of the population is unable to read and write.

Santágata told IPS that a woman named Doña Dulcirene, who lives with her husband, six children and other relatives in an isolated part of the jungle, said ”the radio is a big help,” and would be even better if it offered classes.

Radio Jagube starts out its programming with ”Good Morning Mapiá”, which is open to any local resident who wants to broadcast a message. The station also offers music, lessons in hygiene, and useful information such as news on the market for the natural rubber extracted from trees in the jungle, which serves as a source of income for the local population.

”The radio is the only means of communication” in Brazil’s hinterland, and provides ”a window on the world and on the human wealth of the Amazon region,” said Santágata, a plant therapist who lived in Rio de Janeiro, Switzerland, Morocco, and Japan before moving to Céu de Mapiá.

The community activist first got involved in radio five years ago, when visitors from Spain made a gift to the community of simultaneous translating equipment and a small radio transmitter. Radio Jagube started out with short broadcasts, based on ”intuition” rather than formal training, and an eclectic mix of Japanese and Moroccan music.

Santágata later came into contact with the non-governmental organisation Communication, Education and Information on Gender (CEMINA), which trained her in radio broadcasting, and helped her incorporate a gender focus in her work by taking a critical approach to women’s issues and the injustices suffered by local women.

Three years ago, she joined the Network of Women in Radio, made up of 450 women activists and community leaders trained by CEMINA, which has spawned hundreds of new radio stations working in defence of the rights of women in this South American country of 170 million.

CEMINA, which was created in 1989 in Rio de Janeiro to promote the use of the media in favour of the human rights of women, produces the ”Speak Woman” programme aired by a local commercial station in the city.

The programme was expanded last year, and began to be aired continually over the Internet, through the web site www.radiofalamulher.com, allowing it to be picked up and re- broadcast by interested radio stations.

Health, laws, behaviour, local government, outstanding women and other questions addressed from a gender perspective make up the content of the programme, the executive coordinator of the Internet programme, Silvana Lemos, told IPS.

”Speak Woman” offers things like interviews, radio plays, and live debates on violence in Rio de Janeiro – one of the latest additions, which has had a strong impact, to judge by the telephone calls received.

Nine radio stations, eight of which are community stations, throughout the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area are taking part in the debates, said Lemos.

The potential audience is huge, as there are 17,000 community radio stations in Brazil. The use of the Internet permits distant connections, said the activist, who cited a case in which a university professor in Brasilia, the capital, asked for the transcript of the programme’s interview with a prostitute from the impoverished northeast for his research.

This year, a new phase of the work of CEMINA and the Network of Women in Radio began, through the Cyberelas project, which awarded equipment and training to 13 community radio stations that belonged to the Network or worked in defence of the rights of women, enabling them to broadcast their programmes over the Internet.

They will also be able to receive the ”Speak Woman” programme, in order to broadcast it weekly in their areas, while offering their own programmes to the entire Network, twice a month, said the general coordinator of CEMINA, Thais Corral.

The production of the local community stations will thus be decentralised and receive broader dissemination, while diversity will be boosted by the sharing of experiences and visions from all over Brazil.

Another objective of the project, which has the financial support of the World Bank’s Information for Development Programme, is the ”digital inclusion of women in radio,” noted Corral.

Ten of the Cyberelas will have free broadband Internet connection, which offers rapid, unlimited access, for six months. The other three stations operate in areas that have no access to that service, which is currently available in around 30 cities in Brazil.

Santágata’s is one of those three stations. The Internet connection in Céu de Mapiá depends on expensive interurban calls, and the connection ”frequently collapses,” she complained.

Cyberelas has promised to hook the three stations up via satellite, but that is a difficult and costly solution, said Corral.