Daulat Pane, Section Head, Voice of Indonesia, RRI, Indonesia, Shehara Liyanage Programme Manager, YESFM, Sri Lanka, Suman Basnet, Asia-Pacific Regional Director of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters AMARC, Nepal are all talking about Covid. Daulat from Indonesia gave an overview from this market, cases of Covid increased rapidly here. He spoke about a learning programme for students in rural areas call “Learning through RRI”, learning through the radio with teachers coming into the studio. He also spoke about a programme for students with people who have achieved their dreams to achieve their professional goals. Dulat also said that spoke about his own Covid experience and the reasons for locking down the main station in Jakarta. Also making radio from home and the challenges he faced! Shehara from Sri Lanka spoke about being a youth and pop culture channel and with the morning show which was for commuters. Trying to reach the audience was difficult as they were no longer commuting. Presenters needed to quarantine also so they had to present from home which was a big success especially with videos and voice messages with the audience being very encouraging. Education and reassurance was very important, mental support for the young audiences was very important. The station had to think about reinvention to help and reach out to their audiences. DJs had safety messages for audiences with engagement from the audience including videos. Kristian suggested it’s all about positivity. Suman Basnet, Nepal works with hyper local communities. Many stations are engaged with distanced learning. He said the challenges were common across the world, the first was technology especially community radio in internet in rural areas is not easy, that became a huge problem so how did staff connect with the station, this was something which need to be solved. Also how do you make programmes when staff and volunteers make radio. Local community radio finances were an issue when the economy of the local area dries up so does the finance for these stations. There are however always solutions even for hyper local station. How do you ask everyone to stay home when the station goes to work – talk to their families was a solution. Kristian noted that all of the stations have adapted and the panel went discussed what the solutions are, listen to the session to hear more about these solutions!
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