Building a viable network

Cultural Survival learned from a survey of all 168 stations that we conducted in 2008 that although only seven of the radio stations have Internet access at the station, 90 percent are located within 45 minutes of an Internet café. Seventeen percent (220) of the volunteers reported that they use email and the Internet.  We are working to streamline content distribution to individual radio stations by means of the internet.  Right now, content is developed and sent via CD to five regional distributors.  Station volunteers are then required to travel to a central location, depending on which radio association they belong to, often traveling five or more hours to retrieve content for broadcast by their individual station.  We are in the process of developing a system whereby all content is available more locally via email and downloaded from a server, either at radio stations with Internet access, or at a nearby Internet café.  This would allow more frequent content distribution as well as promote interstation sharing of ideas and programming.  This reconfiguration, however, makes training even more urgent; Cultural Survival will more than double the number of volunteers who are adept at Internet use with the training sessions already in progress and we hope to have at least 50 percent of volunteers proficient in email use and downloading from a server in the next year.  It costs $235 to train ten volunteers over a two-day session to use the Internet for radio purposes—with a click, you can join us by supporting an internet training session. 

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