EMERGE Media Initiative
The Emerging Communities Media Initiative (EMERGE) works with small and emerging communities on media training programs – particularly in radio and multimedia. The program provides training in digital skills and provides support for participants to establish sustainable forms of communication in their communities.
“ICE started the program in response to emerging groups relatively new to Australia struggling to adapt to their new home,” says ICE Director Lena Nahlous. “The Initiative provides skills development and support in radio production for emerging communities. It recognises that they need resources and infrastructure to communicate with eachother and navigate themselves through the settlement process.”
Barry Gamba, who coordinates the ICE Emerging Communities Media Initiative, notes that many relatively new and emerging communities have limited ways of communicating or connecting about shared experiences of settling into life in Australia.
“There’s also a lot of agencies who don’t know how to reach people from these communities. So they miss out on services and information they need to make adapting to a new life easier,” Barry says.
The Emerging Communities Media Initiative is a strategic partnership between ICE and ACL – the Australian Centre for Languages. ACL delivers the Adult Migrant English Program – an education and settlement program for newly-arrived migrants and refugees, helping them to build their spoken and written English skills, learn about the Australian way of life, and learn how to access essential services.
The partnership between ACL and ICE supports the delivery of skills development in radio production through the ICE SWITCH Multimedia and Digital Arts Access Centre.. The partnership between ICE and ACL provides skills development opportunities, as well as enables ACL and other service providers to reach those communities directly.
Throughout 2005 and 2006, workshops in Interviewing and Recording Techniques and Computer Editing have been run with recently-arrived migrants and refugees. The training was very practical – focused on assisting participants to develop their own original material for radio broadcasting.
EMERGE also assisted participants to access on-air hosting opportunities, working with experienced broadcaster Agnes Polese of the Voice of Atour Assyrian radio Program on Radio 2000FM and Edison Yongai of the Sierra Leonean Radio Program on Radio Skid Row 88.9FM.
EMERGE also supports a network of community radio broadcasters, which meets regularly to keep eachother in touch, share ideas and common challenges.
“It’s about capacity-building,” says Barry Gamba. “We don’t teach in a vacuum, or an overly formal classroom situation. Participants gain practical digital media skills, and are supported through the learning process. We are supporting them to a point where they may be able to sustain their own community radio programs. One real achievement is that some of the earlier participants have been supported to mentor other programs to get established. One success story is the Voice of the Nile – a program for Sydney’s emerging Sudanese Community.”
Zyrub Ibrahim, one of the founding members and on-air hosts of Voice of the Nile highlights the impact of the program: “Radio is one of the most important forms of communication for people from small and emerging communities,” he says. “Recently-arrived Sudanese people, for instance, have settled across a wider area in western Sydney and radio gives them a way of keeping in touch.”
Voice of the Nile can be heard each Sunday at 1.30pm on Radio BFM Stereo100.9 MHz. The program celebrates its first year on-air anniversary on Sunday 10th December 2006.