Welcome to Chikuni Community Radio Station 91.8 FM

Projects

Chikuni is a village in the Southern Province of Zambia, 30 km from nearest town Monze. It is a place where Fr. Moreau s.j. started Chikuni Mission in 1905. Within years, the Mission run primary schools, a secondary school, hospital, Teachers Training College.
Chikuni Parish is structured into outstations and Small Christian Communities (SCC). At present there are 21 outstations and nearly 170 SCC in the Parish.

Chikuni Parish Runs many projects under the auspices of the Parish Development Committee (PDC). These projects deal with different issues in Communities around the parish.

Below are short descripton of some of these projects:

 

HBC

Like the rest of sub-Saharan Africa Zambia is in a seemingly never ending struggle with HIV and AIDS and the HBC CHIKUNI  is central to the fight against the silent disease in this area of rural Zambia.

Our vision is to improve the quality of care for the terminally ill and prevent the diseases spread by sensitizing our community especially on HIV & AIDS, but our work includes much more than that. We are not only aiming at improving the patient's health, but also his education, status and food security, while communities and families are as well benefiting.

The project started under the Chikuni Mission Hospital and was turned into a community based project in 2000.
The idea to take this step mainly arose from the insight that involving the entire community into the struggle against HIV / AIDS will be the only way to win it in a long term perspective.

With great support from the community Chikuni Home Based Care is able to provide free medical treatment and care for the patients at their home as long as possible.
Therefore we managed to reduce some burden on the hospital, where beds were being filled by HIV patients that had opportunistic infections and were bed ridden for large periods of time before the project took off.
One of the main purposes is to improve people's access to information and education in order to help them protect themselves against the disease and sensitize the community about HIV / AIDS related issues. The result of 6 years of home based care work is a community where people can discuss openly about the silent desease  and stigma is significantly reduced.

Currently the centre offers a variety of services to more than 700 patients  living in 180 villages within its 5000 sq km catchment area that covers 3 districts; Monze, Gwembe and Choma. Almost daily there are new people tested HIV positive and offered to become clients of Chikuni HBC.

 

Chikuni Orphans Education Project

Chikuni Orphans Education Project was initiated by Chikuni Parish priest, Fr Tadeusz Swiderski in the year 2000. It was formed out of the many problems that the orphans faced. The Parish discovered that most of the orphans were underprivileged in the sense that they never received the necessary education support. This was because their guardians were either too old or too poor to support them educationally, feed them and clothe them.

The idea of the project was floated to the people in the parish and they all agreed Education would be the best thing for them as most of them had dropped out of school due to lack of sponsorship. They then chose an executive which is composed of nine(9) members with the parish priest being the overseer.

Chikuni Parish caters for a wide area. There are twenty-one centres that make up Chikuni Parish. In each centre, there are small Christian communities that consists of several villages meeting to share the word of God. It is from these Small Christian communities that orphans are identified and their names submitted to the orphans education project. A lot of orphans need help, but this project is only able to support 1,500 orphans at the moment.

This project despite being run by the Catholic Church, caters even for children who are not catholic.

These orphans are given school fees, uniforms, clothes, food and other essentials. These are orphans in school from Grades 1-12 and a few at college. Chikuni Orphans Education Project is supporting children in 18 schools within the parish only. Orphans in Primary school are given blankets and other essentials and not school fees because the government declared free education in primary schools. But the ones in Basic and high schools are also given school fees.

One might wonder how they manage to do this. It has all been possible with help from Non governmental organisations in Italy and others in Poland. Since the project started to date, they are the ones funding it. These donors visit Chikuni from time to time to see how it is being run.

The orphans committee does a lot of things to see the project on track. They organise projects for fundraising, visit centres and small Christian communities, organise orphans’ day, and hold workshops, among others. They visit the centres to follow up on the money given out and to see if the projects are running smoothly.

Through their visits and meetings, the orphans Education Project became aware of some orphans who were being mistreated by their guardians. The Committee decided to have an ‘Orphans Day’. This is a day set aside where orphans, guardians, representatives and anyone from the villages come to see orphans play, sing and share life experiences. The orphans are able to say out their problems and this has helped so much because their guardians hear for themselves what happens to the children when they are mistreated. This has given happiness to the orphans.

The church councils and small Christian communities are working hand in hand with the Orphans committee to develop the life of orphans saying, there is nothing much worth than to sacrifice and work for these children for it is for the greater Glory of God.

 

Interactive Radio Instruction, IRI

In an effort to reduce illiteracy levels, Chikuni Parish has partnered with government through the Education Broadcasting Services to accord an education to vulnerable
children who can not attend formal schools. It does this through Interactive Radio Instructions, IRI, commonly called ‘Taonga market”.

Those who attend the “Taonga Market” are usually children that are unable to walk long distances to schools (sometimes a 50-km round trip!) or become farmers despite their young age.

This project started in 2000 with two centres. Presently, they run twenty centres. The lessons are broadcast on Chikuni community Radio station Monday to Friday. They have set up “Radio schools”. These schools use battery-less wind up radios and are run by local volunteer teachers commonly called mentors.

There are 70 mentors in 20 centres. The mentors help the children to follow the educational programmes that are broadcast and do with them exercises and drills before and after the programme. Children have achieved some excellent results with many children getting top places in the National School Tests. With very simple set up, they offer children a full education up to grade seven, with 1 500 pupils.

These mentors have worked hard with the coordinator,Mrs B.M Kamoto and supervisors from the Parish to see this project through. Fr Tadeusz Swiderski s.j is the overseer.

These learners are provided with books, Pencils and pens among others. We can therefore proudly say, a lot of people, young and old have learnt to read and write through this project.

With the help of a German group called Kindernothilfe they have drilled boreholes in five centres to pirate the Agro forestry project to impart agricultural knowledge in the learners. They hope to drill boreholes in all the centres. Ten mentors have been trained in Sustainable Agriculture and organic vegetable gardening and they hope to train them more in agro-forestry.

They have also managed to build a 1 by 2 classrom block with an office at Cheelo Taonga centre, 27 kilometres from chikuni centre. They hope to build in other centres too if they get funds from well wishers.

 

Chikuni Community Radio Station

In a ground breaking move to bridge the information gap, the Tonga people of Chikuni Parish, with help from the Jesuit missions through Fr Andrew Lesniara s.j and Fr Tadeusz Swiderski s.j, set up a Radio station.

It has been broadcasting since 2000. From the few broadcasts when it started, it now broadcasts seventeen hours a day with different programmes covering all aspects of integral human development.

With an aim to give the community a greater capacity building in participating in Radio programmes by identifying issues of concern and make programmes on the same for themselves, Fifty-five Listening clubs of not less than twenty members each were formed. This was to enhance listeners talk about issues they would like to listen to on Radio.

2 people from each club were trained in Basics in Communication and Reporting, facilitated by Chikuni Radio Staff. The members were put in four groups. Each group attended for five days.

The two member-representatives from each club, had internal group meetings in their clubs at which they taught their colleagues what they learnt from the workshop.

The topics discussed cover issues like gender, culture, conflicts between tradition and modern life, agriculture, HIV/AIDS, health, leadership skills and development in rural areas.

The group members get an idea, do a survey and record the programme in the villages. The recorded tape is brought to the Radio where it is listened to, and edited but caution is made not to temper with the producers’ material. This is to make sure the views of the interviewees are expressed freely.

The Radio Station has eight trained members of staff and six media scholars previously called volunteers, who work tirelessly for the community.

Another important group considered as staff is, the News Gatherers who make radio more informative and interesting with their news items from the villages.

The station broadcasts from Chikuni mission on 91.8 FM with a radius spanning over 70 kilometers. It broadcasts to all the 21 out-stations in Chikuni Parish and beyond, with an estimated potential audience of 250,000(low estimate). The station also reaches three other parishes, Monze, Mazabuka and Choma.