[Via ELDIS [2] blog] The Nepali Community Radio Support Centre (CRSC) [3] has launched a new manual entitled Community Radio Performance Assessment System [4]. UNESCO [5] is calling it the “most comprehensive set of indicators concerning community media is the result of a decade-long work of CRSC in promoting, enabling and facilitating the community radio movement in Nepal.”
Like many other developing countries with forbidding landscapes and isolated communities, radio is to be the most effective way of communication in Nepal, where the majority of population lives in villages and the half of it cannot read and write. UNESCO says, “the Nepal experience of community radio is fascinating, inspiring and full of lessons to be learned. But the huge proliferation of community radios there urgently requires well-considered benchmarks and criteria. The new CRSC manual is a major contribution to the development of community media not just in Nepal but more widely in South Asia and internationally.”
Community Radio Performance Assessment System [4] draws from both the grassroots experience of community media and from international broadcast practices. It considers the issues that are the real basis for the success of community media: public accountability, community representation, locally relevant programming, diverse funding and acknowledgement of staff, including volunteers. It covers in details many key success factors, such as participation and ownership, content, management, volunteerism and networking; it can be applied across a wide range of contexts, from policy issues to the assessment of a local station.
CRSC was established by the Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists (NEFEJ) in 2000.