Radio Yaravi [1] of Peru wants “all voices” to be heard. Thanks to this community station with more than 150,000 listeners, children, young people and adults can express themselves freely on social issues or current affairs which are of relevance to them. These people are invited to participate directly in programmes, either by telephone or in the studio.

Radio improves a people’s quality of life and transforms society 

Based in the Miraflores district of Arequipa, an Andean region in the south-west of Peru, Radio Yaravi is aimed primarily at deprived urban areas that are mainly inhabited - as Hugo Ramirez, head of programming, explains - by ‘workers, traders, small businessmen, as well as a large number of unemployed’. Radio Yaravi, he says, ‘promotes development initiatives by encouraging popular participation. Like this, radio improves a people’s quality of life and transforms society’. With these emancipatory objectives, Radio Yaravi’s wide range of programmes caters for everyone: Mil colores (A Thousand Colours), a programme aimed at women, discusses the many difficulties which these listeners encounter, like male chauvinism, which shape their role in family and society. Hablando piedras (Wide of the Mark) is a programme for young people that treats issues which touch their lives, such as drugs, sexuality, citizenship and music. Children also have an hour dedicated to them El trencito de mi barrio (My Neighbourhood’s Little Train), a programme which is both amusing and educational at the same time. Llactanchispak Takyininun (Our People’s Song), broadcast in both Quechua and Spanish, allows the two communities to come together.

	Children participate actively in programming. © Radio Yaravi

Young people engage with society as a result 

The radio station aims to provoke participation by going regularly to the villages, and these visits often result in some warm and amusing moments. On the last mothers’ festival, for example, the station organised a campaign to allow mothers to receive gifts. In the Socabaya district, whilst the inhabitants were waiting for the mobile broadcast unit, Fernando, the presenter, began getting those present involved. Thinking he was on the air, Fernando recorded an extraordinary opening to the programme: he invited the people to sing, which everyone then did as loud as possible, husbands declaring their passion for their wives to mark the occasion. “It was an amazing five minutes”, Hugo Ramirez recalls, “which finished just at the moment when the mobile unit picked-up the signal from the transmitter”… None of it was broadcast, but the songs of this choir were so amusing that everyone collapsed into helpless laughter. Such closeness to communities is not only typical of Radio Yaravi, but more generally of the National Radio Station Co-ordinator [2], to which it belongs.

This network, which brings together 49 radio stations and 27 communication centres, furthers the development of Peru’s rich experience with community and education communication. Through their contacts with ordinary people, the radio stations reinforce community solidarity and play an intermediary role between society and the authorities. Popular participation in programmes helps to strengthen the credibility which they enjoy. The significant involvement of children and young people in the production of programmes, furthermore, allows these people to become more independent and improves their self-esteem. Once they are participants engaged in programming, Hugo Ramirez confirms, “they soon engage with society in a positive way”.