March 2009

Akunthatha, 50 years old is from the Gambella group, from Ethiopia. As a minority in the camp they face a lot of challenges – including conflicts with the majority Somalis. Akunthatha has six daughters – two of which have disabilities and two of which are single mothers. They have been living in the refugee camp for five years and are awaiting a decision on their status. Until last year she rarely listened to the radio. As part of the distribution, the Gambella group received three radios.

The radios came with a catch however. Not intentionally of course. The Gambellas do not speak English, Swahili or Somali and there is no radio programming in their language. They actually listen to the radio through people who can translate for them. Imagine that. An entire community of say 100 people listening to three radios, through translators. It was superfluous for them to tell me how much they craved access to information…

Akunthatha says that the experience has changed her life. She now understands that women have the same rights as men and knew that “Sunday is International Women’s Day!” During the day she listens to the radio with her female neighbors as they cook and clean – but on weekends the radio becomes a community event. People gather to drink coffee and to listen. Lots of discussions ensue. Right now the community is concerned about a shortage of water. Because of her many daughters, Akunthatha greatest concern is raising awareness about domestic violence and empowering women to pursue their rights.

A 64 year old woman mentioned that “I have not gone to school and before we did not even know how to open the radio box. Then we learned how to use it. Then we have a language barrier, but we overcame this by finding a translator. We have learned many things – about diseases, the world, the fighting. We really appreciate it.”

“There is an important change in the community; we have news from Somalia, and also from the rest of the world. We are also learning about what is affecting our community directly – such as gender violence and disease.” Fatima, 37 years old

There is no doubt that our listening project achieved its objective – in spades in fact. Our NGO partners mentioned that radios were playing 24/7, before I had even met with the women’s groups. The women were extremely pleased. Among all of things I discussed with the women, one of their comments stands out as the benchmark of success for this project. It is “We never had access to information before. Now we do.”



Until now, they never listened to the radio. They had no news from Somalia or the rest of the world. They had limited information on health and disease prevention. Rumours run rampant in the camps – about HIV transmission for example. One woman told me that she thought HIV and AIDS was a disease for young people – if you were over 49 years old and you weren’t at risk.

Now they listen to the radios 24 hours a day. Both BBC and Voice of America offer programming in Somali, and cover everything from news, to health, to important cultural issues such as female genital mutilation. Women who are illiterate now have access to information and education, and it is changing their lives and the life of their community. Their new-found knowledge is being put to use – our NGO partners tell us about lively discussions they see going on between men and women, where before there were none.

The one challenge a successful project brings with it? Having to deal with the request all week of “we want more”…!

Driving into the Dadaab area is quite an interesting experience. First the paved road you are on ends, and it then takes three hours on an unpaved sandy (and very bumpy) road to get there. After this first challenge is accomplished – the next challenge is trying to figure out what it means to actually be “there”. Dadaab was created in 1992 in response to a massive flow of refugees over the Somali border into Kenya. Since then it has grown into three separate camps, with a total population of approx. 250,000 people – and they are expecting an additional 100,000 people this year.




There is nothing around Dadaab except sand and bush, and it’s terribly hot and dry. There are some very small host communities in the surrounding area who are pastoralists and whom we can thank for the gorgeous herds of camels that we see everyday. The fact that so many refugees have lived in this location for almost two decades also makes it difficult to understand what Dadaab is, because in some ways it operates as though it were a permanent settlement – there are markets, schools, hospitals and community centres. In another way it operates as a typical refugee set-up where rations are distributed to the refugees and their basic needs are taken care of by others.

In late 2007, we identified a need in the camps that was going unfulfilled – women’s access to information and education. Through a generous donation and successful partnerships in 2008 we distributed 400 radios to women’s listening groups in the three refugee camps.