Today is the third annual World Radio Day as declared by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The focus for this year’s recognition and celebration is youth and innovation in radio.
In a World Radio Day message UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, “As the international community shapes new sustainable development goals and the new global agreement on climate change, we need to hear the voices of young women and men loudly, strongly and urgently.”
As Jennifer reported in yesterday’s LPFM Watch, this evening the Seattle Public Library is hosting an event and live broadcast celebrating the new low-power FM stations that will be going on the air in the Puget Sound region. Community radio WORT-FM in Madison, WI has been celebrating all day long culminating with the station’s 2nd annual live blues broadcast from a local brewery.
Elsewhere in the world the Media Institute of Southern Africa put on a live broadcast in Botswana, and South African President Jacob Zuma said, “In South Africa, radio still plays a prominent role as an affordable means of communication for all the people in the country, including even the underprivileged communities in remoter parts of the country.”
A two-day Radio Fair was held in Bhubaneswar, India featuring live music performances and an exhibition with a large sand sculpture of a radio, along with vintage radio equipment and a shortwave listening stall. In Nepal UNESCO organized a town-hall meeting in Kathmandu in partnership with the Association of Community Radio Broadcasters broadcast on local FM stations.
A map detailing all World Radio Events is available here.
UNESCO also put together a fact-filled infographic, highlighting that radio is the most accessible medium for disadvantaged groups, 76% of farmers in Africa use radio, and that, sadly, 65 radio journalists have been murdered in the last two years, and almost half were under the age of 30.
