The Election Commission of India (ECI) has partnered with the University of Hyderabad (UoH) for the upcoming general elections. The collaboration between UoH and ECI will help in promoting voter education and electoral literacy. Community radios will be used to promote voter literacy across the country.
UoH’s UNESCO Chair on Community Media has collaborated with the Election Commission of India’s flagship programme, S ystematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) to utilize the potential of community radio as a means for improving the electoral literacy and voters’ participation through the use of community generated content.
‘Festival of Democracy’ project will have about 50 community workers from more than 20 stations across India. They will gather in Hyderabad for a three-day workshop which will begin from February 22nd to discuss ideas regarding the key themes and also work on how to utilize the community radio for highlighting voter awareness.
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The UNESCO Chair on Community Media Head at UoH, Prof. Vinod Pavarala said that post the capacity-building workshop in Hyderabad, participants will go back to their stations and then create about 100 hours of radio programmes on a set of themes pertaining to the voter education in more than 10 languages including Bengali, Gujarati, Assamese, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Odiya, Urdu and Telugu.
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The 25 chosen community radio stations will have to share their content with the other two stations in their regions so that coverage can be maximized up to about 75 stations. UoH’s UNESCO Chair will monitor the content as well as help with the production activities.