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Along many quiet backwaters of Amazon tributaries, where the only form of transport is a canoe, there is always someone with a battery-powered radio. With that in mind, Eliana Elías began a radio program called Bienvenida Salud (Welcome Health), to reach women in the Amazon basin, to empower them by helping them discover their self-worth, and to help their families as a natural consequence. Based in Iquitos, the program is still going strong after 11 years and produces lively skits or soap operas to cover issues of spiritual, mental and physical health. The program has changed the lives of hundreds of women and men throughout the department of Loreto and in most of Ucayali and Huanuco. In 2003, at least 25,000 people were known to listen to the weekly program. Now, there are more than 120,000 listeners, of which at least 30% are men. Elias, a young and lively communications expert, began researching and implementing communication strategies in 1991 to improve the quality of life of people in the Amazon basin, some of the poorest and least included Peruvians. In 1998, she founded Minga Peru as a community-based organization, and began to use culturally appropriate material and programs to reach the Amazon communities. Her focus arose from the poor health information distributed by the government and her own experience in seeing insensitive or inappropriate viewpoints given by well-meaning foreign aid programs. In the case of the Ministry of Health, “They handed out materials no one could understand,” she told Arin Farrington for the Ford Foundation Report in 2003, “full of technical jargon and with no culturally appropriate context. Producing culturally appropriate material goes beyond using local vocabulary and the right accent; it demands that the people you are trying to reach participate in forming the messages and that their sensitivities, values, attitudes and emotions are integral to them.” Bienvenida Salud is created by a group of health workers, educators, social scientists and communication specialists. The stories acted out on the program are taken from real life, and one of the main formats is a conversation between a younger and an older woman, the younger voicing new ideas while the older one expresses the natural reticence of her generation and gradual acceptance. The program receives hundreds of letters from its listeners, requesting topics or telling their life stories. “One of the letters we received,” says Elías, “was from a woman who thanked us for saving her life.” The woman lived far from Iquitos in a rural area. She was pregnant when she heard one of the stories on pre-natal care and told her husband she thought she had all the symptoms described on the program (swelling feet, headaches). Her husband took her in their canoe to the nearest health post, two days of paddling away, where she was diagnosed and received treatment for pre eclampsia. Minga Peru now also complements the radio program with a center on the River Marañon to train community promoters and leaders in health and education issues, and directs projects to generate income and train leaders in management of natural resources. As Minga's executive director, Elías has led the development of an innovative methodology on Intercultural Communication for Social Change, which is being used to train organizations and social leaders in Peru and throughout Latin America. The organization's impact also includes the training of women leaders in 19 rural communities for social entrepreneurship and women's networks, the commitment of 174 teachers in 24 schools to educating on prevention of HIV/AIDS and against violence to women, and the training of radio correspondents and schoolteachers in intercultural communications. Additional information: www.mingaperu.org ; www.fordfound.org ; www.ashoka.org : www.avina.net |