[WSIS CS-Plenary] "Community radio - lets make it happen" discussion in Sri Lanka (Dhanushi Senanayake)

[ceo]

Dear friends,
We would like to share with you the proceedings of the discussion we
organised in Sri Lanka on "Community radio -   lets make it happen".

A discussion "Community radio-lets make it happen" was organised by
Practical Action. Community radio practitioners, broadcasters, academics
and NGO representatives participated in the discussion. Community radio
then and now, the challenge of empowering listeners, a legal and policy
framework that ensures freedom of expression and right to communication
was the key themes on which panelists expressed their views. 

The panelists were Sunil Wijesinghe - controller of Kotmale Community
Radio, Wijedasa Hewage - Director of Sinhala Services of the Sri Lanka
Broadcasting Corporation, Tilak Jayaratne - Senior broadcaster, Thilina
Samarasuriya -Director of the Training School of Sri Lanka Broadcasting
Corporation, Kapila M Gamage- Senior broadcaster, Vasana Wickremasena
-Open University and sajan venniyoor joined on skype from India. 
 
Learning more about community media initiatives that have worked is
important, to get more interested individuals and groups on community
radio to join and to move forward collectively, importance of empowering
listeners to lobby for reviving community radios, initiating the
transmission of the community radio station in a village in Polonnaruwa
which was initially set up to work alongside another project which did
not take off, were some of the suggestions that came from the
participants.  

As a next step participants agreed to be on a mailing list that will be
linked to the Janthakshan.net portal and share information. This
discussion was held at the Practical Action conference room on the 13th
of June 2008.

Thank you
 

Dhanushi Senanayake
Coordinator Publicity
Practical Action
05,Lionel Edirisinghe Mawatha
Kirulapone
Colombo 05
Sri Lanka

Tel:    00 94 11 2829412
Fax:    00 94 11 2856188
Web:   www.janathakshan.net <http://www.janathakshan.net/>  www.practicalaction.org <http://www.practicalaction.org/>


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