iMedia’s new projects

iMedia is involved in two major pro­jects which launched in Autumn 2011 – Pakhto Voices in Pakistan and the Nigeria Sta­bility and Recon­struc­tion Pro­gramme (NSRP). Both are con­flict trans­form­a­tion pro­jects, and both are likely to involve a full range of media from radio pro­gram­ming to SMS and social media. 

Pakhto Voices is a part­ner­ship with PEPL – Pop­ular Engage­ment Policy Lab Ltd — a small British com­pany focusing on post-conflict research and com­mu­nic­a­tion. iMedia’s role is to oversee the pro­duc­tion of four weekly Pakhto (Pashto) lan­guage radio pro­grammes that will provide cov­erage of Pakhtun society in the border areas of Afgh­anistan that would not oth­er­wise be avail­able to local listeners.

These half-hour pro­grammes will chart the massive shifts in Pakhtun society brought about by violent extremism and con­flict in recent years. They will share solu­tions to common prob­lems, and con­nect com­munities through a com­bin­a­tion of radio pro­gram­ming, a monthly print magazine and SMS and voice­mail feed­back. This is very much an audi­ence driven pro­ject that uses PEPL’s rolling research to allow Pakhto Voices’ journ­al­ists to follow up on issues that most con­cern people. The project’s ini­tial stage runs until April 2012, with a planned two-year extension.

Nadene Ghouri is the lead con­sultant for iMedia in Pakhto Voices. She and Gordon Adam selected exper­i­enced radio and print media staff, who hit the ground run­ning and pre­pared the first edi­tions of the pro­grammes within a month of being appointed. This is a Pakistani-led pro­ject, under the aus­pices of a new local com­pany, Raabta Consultants.

The Nigeria Sta­bility and Recon­struc­tion Pro­gramme is a DFID-funded six-year pro­gramme led by the British Council. iMedia will provide the com­mu­nic­a­tions com­ponent. Ambi­tious in scale, it has a number of chal­len­ging object­ives. Firstly, to reduce injuries and death caused by violent con­flict in the North, the Middle Belt and the Niger Delta regions of Nigeria. Secondly, to increase civic engage­ment using new approaches to pro­mote peaceful res­ol­u­tion of con­flicts and viol­ence against women, while at the same time strength­ening women’s con­tri­bu­tion in peace building. And thirdly, to improve con­flict early warning sys­tems and create swifter response capa­city among state and non-state actors in Nigeria.

From November 2011, iMedia is spending the first year researching the most appro­priate use of media to achieve these goals as part of the pro­gramme plan­ning pro­cess. It is expected that the advances made by iMedia and its part­ners in inter­active com­mu­nic­a­tion in Pakistan and Afgh­anistan will provide a fruitful source of ideas for this exciting new project.