SECTION 5:  RECOMMENDATIONS 

 

The Terms of Reference call for us to make recommendations to donors on how best 

they can contribute towards building a good quality, appropriate and sustainable 

community radio and journalism training sector in South Africa, as well as to 

recommend what donors need to do more of, less of, start doing and stop doing in 

order to achieve this.  In this Section, we provide some suggestions, based on our 

findings and conclusions, in this regard. These should not be taken as any kind of a 

blueprint.  We believe that the discussion at the proposed workshops will take us 

much further, as well as highlighting any deficiencies in our thinking. 

 

We have begun by making some recommendations to the sector, as we believe that 

the donor strategy should be in support of a sector strategy. Some of these may 

seem quite prescriptive.  They represent only our ideas on how the sector might 

regulate itself and should be seen in this light.   

 

5.1 RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE SECTOR 

 

5.1.1  That the sector accept the bona fides of the NCRF as a legitimate co- 

ordinating body for training within the sector, but that its expectations of 

the NCRF in this role be clarified and made explicit. 

 

5.1.2  That the term “training” be expanded to “capacity building” so as to 

extend the range of activities that are seen to fit within it. 

 

5.1.3  That the sector, led by the NCRF and the stations, but with extensive 

input from providers, develop a set of criteria/indicators for measuring 

the desired impact of capacity building in the sector.  Such 

criteria/indicators should provide clear guidelines for what is meant by 

terms such as “efficiency”, “community ownership and involvement”, 

“sustainability” and so on. 

 

5.1.4  That the NCRF, in consultation and/or collaboration with providers, 

draw up a differentiated capacity building strategy for the sector, based 

on the indicators developed and the needs identified, which takes into 

account the need for rationalisation and cost reduction, as well as 

some of the issues discussed above, in particular: 

 

 Building the capacity of stations to provide training internally 
themselves, by providing resources, ensuring that all external 
training has a skill transfer component and offering training to 
Training Managers in how to do capacity building in their 
stations; 

 Ensuring that there is formal regionally-based training in certain 
”gap areas”, specifically geared to future station-based transfer; 

 Matching accredited interventions to the needs of the stations 
and to the right people within the sector; 

 Insisting that all formal training interventions are accompanied 
by a skills transfer component, which is supported by stand- 
alone materials; 

 Encouraging the co-ordinated production and dissemination of 
support materials generally;

 Encouraging the regionalisation of organisational development 
interventions to the end that all regions are serviced as 
effectively and cost-effectively as possible; 

 Using such interventions as a basis for needs assessment and 
follow-up; 

 Getting donor support for station-specific expert interventions, 
based on specific needs;

 Encouraging and supporting planned inter-station exchanges; 
 Supporting the need for sector events, regional or national, to 
celebrate the community radio sector. 

 

5.1.5  That the NCRF, as station representative, encourage collaboration 

among providers, and demand certain standards for all interventions, 

including: 

 

 Clarity on intended measurable outcomes and how 

the needs on which these are based were assessed; 

 Clarity on who should participate in, and who is 

likely to benefit from, interventions; 

 Specifics about how participants will be able to 

transfer skills or understandings learned to others in the sector; 

 Specifics about how interventions will support the 

development of a community radio culture; 

 Specifics about follow-up support. 

 

Support for interventions should be dependent on satisfactory answers 

on these issues, and future support to a provider or a group of 

providers should be dependent on acceptable implementation. 

 

5.1.6  That the sector as a whole, including providers and stations, 

represented through the NCRF, develop a policy to deal with various 

forms of gender discrimination, which imposes sanctions on individuals, 

stations and providers found guilty of sexism and any other forms of 

gender discrimination and oppression. 

5.1.7  That the providers, as a sub-sector of the sector, develop their own 

collaborative guidelines for themselves with regard to how capacity 

building is planned and offered, what is offered, by whom, and how 

collaboration takes place.  We believe that a co-ordinating committee of 

providers, possibly made up of regional representatives, would be 

useful, and that provision should be made for sanctions against 

providers who act contrary to the agreed guidelines. 

 

5.1.8  That the providers, through some form of co-ordinating structure, 

negotiate with the NCRF, as representative of the stations, some 

guidelines for station responsibility in capacity building situations, with 

the NCRF taking responsibility for sanctioning individuals and stations 

which contravene these guidelines. 

 

5.1.10 That the NCRF take responsibility for equipping the sector to defend its right 

to exist and grow through increasing its lobbying and advocacy 

capacity. 

 

5.2 RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE DONORS 

 

5.2.1  That the donors support the development of a donor forum in the 

sector and decide how this could best be steered, without making the 

forum so complex and demanding as to be onerous.  E-mail links and a 

face-to-face meeting once a year may well be sufficient. 

 

5.2.2  That the donor forum take on the responsibility of widening the circle of 

donors contributing in this sector, based on a belief in its ability to build 

democracy and civil society, as well as individual communities.185 

 

5.2.3  That the donors agree on a set of “bottom line” requirements which 

need to be met by any proposals for support in the sector. 

 

5.2.4  Thar the donors support the development of the kind of strategy 

described above in the sector. 

 

5.2.5  That the donors support interventions and processes within the sort of 

framework suggested above, while being open to variations on the 

framework, as motivated by the sector, and based on a common donor 

vision and indicators for what they want to achieve in the sector. 

 

5.2.6  That the donors collaborate and/or co-ordinate in the interests of 

ensuring that the full range  of capacity building activities likely to build 

the sector at all levels is supported.   

5.2.7  That donors ensure that they have an even-handed approach to all 

players in the sector, and make decisions based on clear criteria and 

clearly articulated motivations. 

 

5.2.8  That donors encourage and support a regional spread of providers, 

particularly for organisational development work, and act carefully, with 

a view to ongoing regional support, when a decision is made to 

withdraw support from a particular provider. 

 

5.2.9  That donors share best practices from their South African and 

international experience with one another and with the sector. 

 

5.2.10 That, in the short-term, donors give particular consideration to some forms of 

interventions that address the following: 

 

 building internal station capacity to do capacity building; 

 emphasising the “community” in community radio; 

 providing support to new groups and to stations 

prior to licensing; 

 Board development and volunteer management; 

 human resource management; 

 financial management, financial sustainability, 

marketing and advertising; 

 lobbying and advocacy; 

 resource centre maintenance skills (for administrators); 

 networking within one’s own community; 

 development of materials that can stand alone in 

stations as well as the translation of materials; 

 development of multi-lingual and multi-skilled trainers.