The Voice of the Future
The success of our living is measured not by what we can accumulate for ourselves, but what we can bestow upon our fellow travelers on life?s tough travel.
W. Phillip Keller
In late 1997, a sixteen-year-old boy walked into Talking Drum Studio in Monrovia, Liberia. He had an idea, and he needed Talking Drum Studio to make it happen. Talking Drum Studio, a project of Search for Common Ground, produces- and teaches others to produce-radio programs.
Through news, feature stories, music and soap operas, talking Drum Studio aims to encourage dialogue and defuse violence.
But this boy had more than just a good idea. He had spirit, perspective and a powerful message. He and a small group of children had created the Children?s Bureau of Information to give a voice to the children of Liberia, to help other children-their peers-recover from seven years of civil war. Before long, the Children?s Bureau of Information and Talking Drum Studio were producing a weekly show titled Golden Kids News, which was aired by a local radio station. The impact was almost immediate: Children?s voices were being broadcast, and people stopped to listen..
Golden Kids was such a hit that, before long, there were more people walking through the doors of Talking drum Studio. This time, it was the U.N. High Commission on Refugees asking whether we would produce another program. The result, Children?s World, was a program ?by and for children affected by war.? This weekly program shared the experiences of children who were displaced by war and were trying to rebuild their lives. With adult support, the children of Children?s World broadcast poetry, songs, storytelling, news and music to thousands of listeners every week.
We started a second Talking Drum Studio in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in April 2000. Golden Kids News was the first program we produced. The impact in Sierra Leone was even more striking than it had been in Liberia. Soldiers in the U.N. peacekeeping mission, market people and taxi drivers all stopped by the studio to comment on the children?s programs.
Five years later, thirteen radio stations in Sierra Leone are carrying Golden Kids News and are frequently asked to replay each program. A nationwide survey conducted in 2004 showed that over 88 percent of the respondents listened to Golden Kids News and almost all of them (98 percent) reported that the program changed their attitudes toward the role of children in Sierra Leone. Listeners also thought the program ?made children aware of options besides warfare and contributed to the healing process after trauma.?
In What?s Going On, a film produced for the United Nations, Michael Douglas interviewed one of the Golden Kids reporters in Sierra Leone. This young man had been a former child soldier who joined Golden Kids News as a way to put his horrific past behind him and to help the other estimated fifteen thousand child combatants. ?I interviewed some of my colleagues to explain their stories,? he explained to Mr. Douglas, so the people in the community, they would be able to accept them back.?
Search for Common Ground expanded children?s radio programming to Angola, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo and is making its methodologies available to organizations around the world. The remarkable story of Golden Kids New, Children?s World and the Children Bureau of Information often surprises people. As a producer at Talking Drum Studio said: ? Very often, adults believe that kids do not have any thoughts of their own. This is a fallacy. What we have discovered is that children do have their own fears and concerns, and, if given a chance, they express their thoughts very well.?
The first time I watched a Children?s World program being produced I Liberia, I was immediately impresses by the image of a small child with large headphones speaking into an even larger microphone: ?My name is Brandy Crawford, and this is Children?s World, a program produced by children for children affected by war.? I suddenly understood on a visceral level the power of the programming. I struggled to hold back tears as the innocence and purity of a child reaching out to other children in the face of horrible atrocities stirred my own heart: to compassion, beauty and hope, the very essence of being human, all of which will need to be cultivated if we are to move beyond war.
As for that sixteen-year-old boy who walked into Talking Drum Studio five years ago, he went on to become a Child Ambassador for UNICEF and is now on a full scholarship at the university. But the most important of his achievements must be that, while still only a child himself, he created a platform for children everywhere to voice their hopes and fears, and to teach us all something about the human spirit.
Philip M. Hellmich
1601 Connecticut Ave. NW, #200
Washington, DC 20009-1035
Phone: (202)265-4300
Fax: (202)232-6718
E-mail: search@sfcg.org
Rue Belliard 205 bte 13
B-1040 Brussels, Belgium
Phone: (+32 2) 736 7262 Fax: (+32 2) 732 3033
E-mail: search@sfcg.be
Young People's Media Network - Coordinator
c/o ECMC (European Centre for Media Competence)
Bergstr. 8 / 11th floor
D-45770 Marl - Germany
Email: cschuepp@unicef.org
URL: www.unicef.org/magic
Mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/youthful-media
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