Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Quito (Agenzia Fides) - The Latin American Association of Radio Education (ALER) has launched a project to collect information to promote the adoption of public policies for sustainable development in the Amazon Region. The initiative will involve six countries: Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela. The Latin American Association of Radio Education (ALER), based in Quito (Ecuador), was established in 1972, when 18 radio stations of the Catholic Church decided to join together. These radio stations work to provide literacy, especially in the countryside. Together, they tried to improve the planning and the quality of educational programs, staff training and research of international economic support, among other objectives.
The latest project aims to develop a system of interconnectivity involving 30 radio stations that will offer reports, articles, surveys, and radio programs to provide information on the situation in the Amazon. The group of communicators will travel by boat through the Amazon River, Napo River and the Orinoco River and collect information on living conditions of the populations they encounter. In this way, the radio will become an agent of transformation of civil society, and through the radio the public will be informed on the issues of this region. The project will be developed in three phases over the course of three years and several Jesuit missionaries will participate as an organized traveling team.
The beneficiaries of this project are about 400 journalists and producers, men and women working in radio, representatives of the different cultures of each sub-region in several Amazonian countries participating in the project. Also there will be 100 participants, men and women, from the indigenous peoples and 150 participants of different communities. There are are more than one million radio-listeners in the Amazon. (CE) (Agenzia Fides 07/12/2009)
