Civil society organizations in Iligan City along with the community leaders and volunteers convened yesterday to participate the Planning Workshop on COVID-19 Radio Monitoring held at Tabe’s Place, Palao, Iligan City.
The activity’s purpose is to package information related to COVID-19 that will be utilized for radio programming. It aimed to strengthen community actions regarding the monitoring and reporting of sectoral COVID-19 experiences, issues, and recommendations especially on their respective communities.
The activity was also focused on discussing locally-led initiatives to both negative and positive impact of the pandemic. It was also an avenue to emphasize the action plans towards information drive on the prevention and mitigation of COVID-19.
One of the important tasks of the participants is to support local reporting and will serve as sources of valid and truthful information regarding COVID-19-related news of their communities.
Salem Arellano of EDGE FM is one of the resource speakers of the event who mainly highlighted the importance of community-based news reporting. He also discussed the format of writing a news script and significance of the community’s role in information dissemination especially that there are still a lot of audience who rely on radios.
“Radio announcers are also there to provide facts, educate, and inform people especially those who are not active online. We all have a responsibility. If we do not want the world to be destroyed, contribute something. We are surrounded by fake and biased news. But it is within us, to adhere on reporting honest and truthful news.” he said.
Also, Biema Minoza, Station Manager of Radyo Pilipinas Iligan, graced the event with her in-depth discussion on how to write effective and notable news that could be potentially broadcasted on the radio. Basically, she emphasized key points on writing news such as looking into development goals and always report real-time actions as well as being non-partisan in delivering the news.
“Let us remember that in reporting, especially when it is about COVID-19, it should be developmental. Since we are all here to be community patrollers, and as part of a government radio station, we think of the people first, and Filipino muna [Filipino first]. We have to sit together and feed real and current information. You should also remember that in writing news, be simple and straightforward.” she said.
The participants also had a simulation on writing a news report for radio and both of the resource speakers provided their comments and inputs for improvement and more hands-on processing of the participants’ capacity of being community patrollers.
Through this activity, Kasikas sa Komunidad, a platform for local leaders, civil societies, and people’s organizations along with the local media personalities was made to unify the information drive efforts and initiatives and to proactively communicate plans and activities in combatting COVID-19 which are helpful for radio programming.
Some of the important plans discussed during the workshop are to finalize the packaging of information that will be used for the radio programming and set meeting schedules for the continuity of the advocacy.
The activity was made possible through the COVID-19 Risk and Prevention Communication component of the Marawi Response Project funded by USAID in partnership with Plan International and ECOWEB as a local consortium partner.
