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Apart from the quantitative indicators, the most obvious benefit at the community level was the cohesiveness resulting from farming families working toward common purposes.
The three pronged process of involving them in the identification and prioritizing of problems from the outset, encouraging their participation in seeking appropriate technological solutions, and creating the conditions for home-grown generation of communication messages to inform fellow residents about, and motivate them toward, practice changes, appears to have struck a responsive chord.
Building upon the linkages with government agencies and NGOs established during the campaign launches provided the technical resource base to tackle each set of problem areas in logical progression.
Particularly noteworthy were the early contributions made by each community toward erecting the audio-towers and production studios, and the later dedication and enthusiasm shown by the "radyo associations" toward maintaining regular broadcast schedules.
As a result, the expertise gained by the pilot-sites is being called upon to assist other communities in mounting CATS operations. Certainly, in terms of day-to-day equipment operation, script preparation and programme production, they have much to offer. Ultimately, over time, the greatest contribution they might make is to provide guidelines on CATS's operational sustainability and its role in meeting the changing information needs of each community in line with its socio-economic progress.
From an LGU point of view, the CATS provided an excellent forum for extension-worker involvement in the community. Indeed, in most instances the SoAs were hosted by the extension staff and in effect their status was considerably enhanced as a result. In Tulungatung extension workers were given a regular weekly broadcast slot.
From a process stance, the project provided an excellent opportunity for further refining the DSC model. In particular, the pioneering of direct beneficiary involvement in RRAs and KIPs as a backdrop to undertaking the detailed AKAPs as tools for accurate diagnoses of farmer problems was successfully realised.
As well, the project introduced a previously untried, but potentially powerful delivery medium, the audio-tower system, as a stimulus for local development. Thus, as a learning experience for both the RACOs and ACD, there seems little doubt that considerable capacity-building toward mounting community development projects has been realised. As one national expression of this confidence, during November 1994 the project received the "Oscar Florendo Award", conferred by the President of the Republic, as the most outstanding regional / local communication project of the year.
Even though the project proceeded relatively smoothly, it did experience several constraints, some due to natural factors, others to changes in government policy, and some to equipment failures. A number of these have been eluded to earlier in the individual sections and are summarised here.
The Philippines lies in a major typhoon belt and hence any free-standing facility such as an audio tower is susceptible to the effects of typhoons. Normally, the country experiences about 20 or so typhoons per year, but during 1993 the number increased to 37. The island of Mindanao is typhoon free. However, all other regions, and particularly Region 2, were affected both in terms of equipment malfunctioning and damage to crops.
As far as the audio-tower equipment per se was concerned, what was originally perceived as a relatively simple technology turned out to be somewhat more complex. As a result, an audio engineer was engaged to provide technical back-stopping to the pilot-sites. Subsequent to his recommendations, some of the components had to be upgraded, namely, speakers and amplifiers.
As well, audio-towers were moved from their original to new locations to provide more effective coverage in Concordia and Tulungatung. Although these factors did not pose a severe financial setback, they did delay the flow of campaign materials while the replacement equipment was purchased and installed and the towers moved. On the positive side, the configuration now in place can easily stand the test of replication to other sites.
The implementation of the Local Government Code and the devolvement of DA extension responsibility to LGUs, essentially to the municipal mayor level, meant a reassignment of original extension staff in two cases (Regions 2 and 4).
The replacement staff were quickly contacted by the RACOs concerned and oriented to the goals of the pilot projects.
Nevertheless, a great deal of investment in time and development was lost since the original extension workers were participants in some of the training courses (for example, Community organization; Community broadcasting) and were part of RAC O project planning from the start.
Additional factors contributing to keeping the project partially behind schedule occurred in Region 4 wherein the pilot site was relocated twice before it was determined that an appropriate community had been selected.
A further detrimental factor in Region 4 was the departure of the original RACO coordinator and project staff following two years of implementation, including the fuller benefits of training workshops, study tour (for the RACO coordinator), and frequent contact with the other participating regions.
With the appointment of a replacement RACO coordinator, manager and clerk / typist, a new pilot project was launched during mid-April 1994. The team is moving quickly to make up lost ground and it is anticipated that they will have completed the full DSC process by June 1995. As a result of the multitude of setbacks experienced, however, Region 4 was not sufficiently advanced to be included in the impact assessment.
A final factor which evolved from practice and which should influence the setting of criteria for new sites was the sprawl of two of the barangays chosen, Concordia and Tacunan. Only about half the area was reached by the audio-towers in these pilot barangays; to compensate the outlying areas, audio-cassettes were bicycled around to organised listening groups.
Much of the audio-cassette material was specific to technology recommendations and hence this portion of the audience was not privy to the full range of broadcast material nor the spontaneous news and information features. In hind-sight, it is now recommended that a clustered village of two to three kilometres in diameter be included in the rationale for site selection.
Based upon this experience acquired over three years, a number of useful suggestions have emerged with regard to advising future applications of the DSC model for community development.
Foremost among these, perhaps, concerns the choice of project site and its meeting of the criteria initially elaborated. Our observations indicate that the commitment of the barangay administration is vital to successfully getting the project off the ground, along with the presence of an active farmers' organisation to keep it moving.
In the communities where these ingredients were not in place, we were forced to change the project site. As well, in addition to meeting the pre-set criteria for pilot-site selection, more research may be needed on the level of social preparation for a given community to successfully undertake a project.
As a starting point, the difficulties in building a consensus involving a critical mass of participants toward objectives to be pursued, and the balance between outside generated RRAs and inside PRAs to realistically set them (Chambers, 1992), will vary widely from community to community and provide a daunting challenge in a three year project of this nature.
Secondly, future projects of this nature should carefully track communication networks at regional, municipal and particularly the community level during the needs assessment phase (FAO, 1994), to more accurately set new communication strategies and enhance those which exist. The extension worker as facilitator / enabler (Bonafacio, 1994) can do much to support this indigenous network.
Thirdly, the visibly presence of the RACO within the community should be actively pursued. In most cases this has meant that the RAC O project managers have been spending two to three days per week mixing with farmers, sometimes moving to live in their area for extended periods, working with various groups in preparing community announcements and audio-tower programmes, and orchestrating the distribution of technology transfer materials.
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Box 4 Multiple Uses of CATS While the FAO project has concentrated on agricultural technology transfer, many other activities, such as better health and nutrition programmes, additional income generating opportunities, water distribution systems and electrification, have proceeded apace. After a shake down period of six months, each CATS elaborated a weekly broadcast schedule which typically would include one early morning agriculture broadcast, with home economics, youth, cooperatives, health, and religious programmes aired at suitable times throughout the seven-day frame. Many barangay councils included a weekly programme to inform the community about items such as planning underway and decisions taken. Important announcements such as special events in the community and market prices for agricultural products were broadcast as required. By the end of the project a litany of positive examples could be cited for each pilot site. In one site, for instance, a veterinarian unexpectedly arrived during the mid-morning to vaccinate the water buffalo (called carabao in the Philippines) in the area. Given that majority of farmers and their animals were busy in the fields, normally this would have meant that many would have missed the vaccination opportunity. After a series of broadcast tower announcements, virtually all the carabao in the community were brought to the veterinarian. Similar stories have been forthcoming with regard to the 100 percent vaccination rates among children during the annual campaigns. In another barangay, timely announcements prevented the infestation of rhinoceros beetles. The list of positive applications goes on. Some barangays have reported using the system for cheerful wakeup calls for farmers in the early morning and to frighten away predatory birds from ricefields at intervals during the day. No doubt a host of other applications will be recorded as the systems become more fully utilized as an integral part of community life. Other beneficial effects occurred when previously shy or relatively passive members of the farming community suddenly acquired "celebrity" status as a result of their regular hosting of CATS programmes. This same effect extended to extension staff who hosted either SoAs or regular weekly broadcasts. In pilot sites where evaluations were taken of presenters popularity, extension workers were among those receiving the highest ratings. A spill-over effect was also evident in the popularity of community administrators whereby in at least three cases barangay captains in pilot sites were chosen as outstanding in their respective municipalities. |
Fourthly, the elaboration of the "problem tree" billboard visibly prominent in each barangay provided a framework for a comprehensive approach to community development and an immediately accessible focus for NGO and government agencies planning projects in the area. The recommended holistic approach to improving socio-economic progress covering areas such as health, sanitation, nutrition and literacy in addition to agriculture (Balit, 1988, p. 12) can thus be considerably accelerated through such ground-validated tools.
Fifthly, a common theme referred to during the summative evaluation workshop was the need for additional project time to further capacity building in the pilot areas, while at the same time spreading the audio-tower methodology to new sites.
More time is needed to evaluate how CATS will be adapted over time to new community uses or perhaps develop into more sophisticated community AM or FM broadcast radio stations.
More time is needed to test the longer-term durability of CATS equipment, and the capability of broadcast associations to undertake repairs and up-grade components as required - in short, their ability to be self-reliant (Ramirez and Stuart, 1994).
More time would be useful to build up pilot community multimedia production capacities (posters, flip charts, and simple video in addition to CATS), similar to those being developed in a long term FAO project in Mexico (Fraser, 1990).
Such centres would complement and further localize materials produced by the RACOs and serve as a resource base for regional and municipal LGUs. This suggestion fits well with FAO's experience wherein a project duration of four to five years is considered a normal minimum (Balit, 1987); most successful DSC projects have had a running-time of seven to ten years.
Thus, although the final evaluation of this short-term project should be recast three years or so down the road (to have a five-year time-frame for analysis of campaign and follow-up effects), on the whole the summative evaluation was interpreted as positive in terms of both achievements and in flagging those areas requiring further attention.
Certainly, the DSC process model has provided a solid framework which is flexible enough to allow for farmers' elaboration of location-specific needs, the fitting of existing mature technologies available to address their requirements, and the production, pretesting and packaging of user-friendly multimedia materials to meet information, motivation and training gaps. All of this has required, however, two years to get up to speed.
If, as already noted in one region, the DSC approach proves more broadly successful down the line in significantly raising farm productivity and household incomes, future applications of this nature might be directed more toward reducing the front-end analysis stages through rapid-appraisal-type, baseline AKAP surveys using smaller samples.
This "fast-prototyping", according to the jargon of technology-based learning, would accelerate the evaluation of communication strategies used and the rejecting of those which don't work - and the fine-tuning of those that do.
Balit, S. 1988. Rethinking development support communication. Development Communication Report, No. 62.
Balit, S. 1993. Development support communication and agriculture: The road ahead. Development Communication Report, No. 80.
Bonafacio, M. F. 1994. Images of agriculture: Problems, issues and trends in technology transfer. Los Banos, Philippines. PCARRD.
Chambers, R. 1992. Rural appraisal: Rapid, relaxed and participatory. Sussex University, Brighton, UK. Institute of Development Studies.
Gary Coldevin 1986. Evaluation in rural development communication: A case study from West Africa. Media in Education and Development, Vol. 19.
FAO. 1985. Masagana programme: Rice technology transfer in the Philippines, by 0. Sison. Rome.
FAO. 1990. Communication strategies for rural development: A case study on the use of campaigns in Lesotho, by G. Coldevin. Rome.
FAO. 1995. Participatory rapid rural appraisal of farmers' agricultural knowledge and communication systems, by R. Ramirez. Rome.
Lightfoot, C., N. Quinn, P. Singh, A. Bottrall & G. Conway. 1989. Training resource book for agri-ecosystem mapping. Los Banos, Philippines. International Rice Research Institute.
Librero, F. 1990. Development communication strategies: Some experiences in the Philippines. Journal of Development Communication, Vol. 1, No. 1.
Ramirez, R. and T. Stuart 1994. Farmers' control communication campaigns. ILEIA Newsletter, Vol. 10, no. 1.
Stuart, T. H. 1993. Constraints in technology transfer: A users' perspective with a focus on IPM, Philippines. In F.W.T. Penning de Vries et al (Eds.), Systems approaches for agricultural development. Amsterdam. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
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