After ten years of work in the field of radio and conflict transformation I felt that it was time to start my own company, and Radio for Peace Building (RPB)* is the result. The company provides consultancy services and training on using radio for behaviour change communication, in particular for the peaceful transformation of conflicts, in pre-, current or post-conflict environments. We work for NGOs (non-profits), governments and others, and have experience across the world, from Indonesia to Venezuela, and Liberia to Ukraine.
We also collaborate closely with the community interest company, Sun and Rain, which produced the amazing online audio drama Out of the Gate, described by one reviewer as 'sticking a gun finger up to The Archers'.
Testimonials from former clients for Radio for Peace Building are on a separate page, but this is a recent (and unsolicited) email, which endorses the approach:
Dear Francis, Yesterday I spent the day with the 2009 -2010 alumni of Search for Common Ground's radio for peacebuilding project here in Nepal, and I just wanted to tell you that IT IS WORKING!!! You would have loved to be there I know. So many of them started their own talkshows after your trainings, and they talked alot about Knowledge-Attitude-Behaviour, target audience, clear intention, telling both sides of the story, solution-oriented questioning etc. I was clear by the end of the day that the majority of them really did 'get' the peacebuilding concept and are doing it justice. Alot of them get calls from people having conflicts - even from police who can't solve thing, asking them to solve the conflicts for them. It was a very happy-making day, I missed you all day and wished you were there.
(from Serena Rix-Tripathee, Country Director of Search for Common Ground Nepal)
And here I am talking about the work to Tarika of Young Asia TV in Sri Lanka:
The company's services are organised in four main areas: Strategic Communications; Training and Facilitation; Programme Management; and Research and Writing. We are committed to excellence and to creating innovative and flexible solutions. See Services for more detailed information.
Clients
Between 1999 and 2006 I worked for Search for Common Ground (SFCG), first as Director of Studio Ijambo in Burundi, and subsequently as Director of Radio for the whole organisation, based in Brussels. During that time, and since, I've worked as consultant, facilitator and/or trainer in seventeen different countries for the organisations listed below. I have trained ten peace building radio soap opera teams in nine different countries, trained talkshow hosts from over twenty different countries in peace building techniques, coordinated and participated in media sector mappings in six African countries, and co-written the extremely successful Radio Talkshows for Peacebuilding - a guide, amongst many other things (see Testimonials below). I proposed and set up the Radio for Peacebuilding Africa project (www.radiopeaceafrica.org) for SFCG in 2004.
Antenna Foundation (Nepal)
BBC World Service Trust (Report on support to media in Bangladesh)
Carter Center (Venezuela)
Ecole Nationale d'Administration (France)
Equal Access (Chad, Mauritania, Nepal, Niger)
Free Voice International (South Sudan)
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Sri Lanka)
Infoasaid (media landscape guides on Nepal, Bangladesh & Philippines)
IRIN (Angola)
Media for Development (UK)
Radio Netherlands Training Centre (Holland)
Search for Common Ground (Angola, Belgium, Burundi, DRC, Indonesia, Liberia, Middle East, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Ukraine)
UNICEF (Madagascar)
US Embassy (Mali)
World Catholic Association for Communication or SIGNIS (Tanzania)
*RPB is a limited company registered in the England
Copyright (c)2009 Radio for Peace Building & JustHost.com
