Community radio is of, for and by the community. But how to make it possible? Now there is a ready-made source to collect the information about the initiatives required for community radio. It is all on www.communityradionetwork.org.

In collaboration with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), VOICES from Bangalore, India has launched a website in June 2004 about community radio.

The website covers many issues associated with community radio and also provides the guidelines for setting up a community radio station, advocacy initiatives for community radio and also description of experiences of various community radio projects in India.

There are hyperlinks to the following: Introduction, Advocacy initiatives for legislation, Campus community radio, Community Radio Handbook, Community Radio – The Indian experience, How to set up a community radio station, FAQs and Links to visit.

Once the visitor clicks the Introduction, the brief of the entire contents is available. It consists of an introduction to community radio and its role in the society. It has stated that “The current situation confronting community radio in India is the focus of this website”. There is also scope of exploring news, events, discussions and audio files from the homepage itself.

In the ‘Introduction’, the brief of all the other resources available in various sections of this site can be explored. Detailed information about the existing community audio/video initiatives in India are given in the section entitled as ‘Community Radio – The Indian Experience’. The guidelines provided by the Ministry of Information Technology are provided in the section ‘How to set up a Community Radio Station’. The section ‘Community Radio – the South Asian Experience’ provides some of the projects on community radio of South Asian countries. The glimpse of community radio legislations from Australia, South Africa, Canada, Ireland is also available in a separate section.

The questions on the procedures to be followed and equipment required have been answered in another section under the title ‘How to set up Community Radio Station’. Any visitor of this website can easily get an idea about the status of India in respect of community radio operation. ‘Articles & White Papers’ is a separate section that consists of articles by media professionals and others who have been working in this field for several years.

The ‘Links to Visit’ consists of hyperlinks with Partners, Organisations and Networks, Campus Radio (ANNA FM in India and Peswar Radio in Pakistan), Community Radio in the Developing World (mainly highlighting the major projects of South Asia) and Community Radio Global which includes Kauai community radio of Hawaii Islands, WMNF-88.5FM that covers Tampe Bay and beyond, KBOO community radio of Portland.

The contents of the Community Radio Handbook are also provided in this site that include some headings. Each of those headings is hyperlinked for further elaboration in details. The headings are as follows: (1) Community radio – the promise and potential, (2) Community and community radio, (3) Profiles of community radio, (4) Existing platform for community participation, (5) Performance and practices in India, (6) Content planning, (7) Simple and sustainable, (8) Impact and evaluation, (9) Global and regional models. This website will make its contents available in 11 Indian languages besides English.


As the portal is very new, there is huge scope of updating the contents if the site is enriched by more projects going on in various corners of the globe. It will be a very resourceful website if all the projects on community radio, not only in South Asian countries, but also in other parts of the globe, are provided in an arranged manner, preferably region wise, in this website. At the same time, the status of the projects need to be updated regularly. In addition to these projects, the website may be enriched with more information on the application of community radio in various fields of development also through research-based articles and reports.