PPC's Innovative Model

People's Power Collective has pioneered an innovative embedded Community Radio [CR] training and capacity building model in India, that adopts a non-hierarchical, participatory approach.

For real grassroots-driven, bottom-up change via Community Radio, merely hard radio skills is not sufficient. What is needed is a more holistic approach to institutional capacity building - that includes life/soft skills, skill sharing through experience and ‘learning by doing’ approaches. And this can manifest best through engaging on a daily basis to exchange, share & seed, a deeper understanding of the community, its needs, its issues and its ability to see Community Radio as an opportunity to share & gain knowledge & information, and thus take responsibility & participate via this two-way communication, to drive their own positive change.

A core element of People's Power Collective’s model is embedded training and capacity building where members of its team immerse themselves by residing within the identified community over an 18 month period – living and working alongside the local/community based organisation [CBO] to achieve a shared vision.

PPC also sees the potential in convergence of Community Radio with new media , to maximise reach and potential of the medium. We believe this holistic approach with its long term time commitment remains the key to long term social and financial sustainability, of first the CR station and then its wider community group.

PPC's approach to training is an important outcome of a 6 month field study supported by Sir Ratan Tata Trust and conducted by People's Power Collective's Founder and Managing Trustee Saritha Thomas in 2010-11. The goal of this ethnographic study across rural India was to observe, learn from and gain a better understanding of the successes achieved and challenges faced by remote communities in establishing and running their CR stations.

Over the years, People's Power Collective's model has evolved rooted in some core values such as being solely needs and solution based, intuitive and responsive to the community while being enjoyable and impactful for all stakeholders. Our pioneering holistic and embedded approach to capacity building has been put into practice with promising results.