How a Radio Show Gives Unwed Mothers in Morocco a Voice

A woman named MaiLy Do started a Vietnamese-language radio show in Oklahoma City after she realized on Sept. 11, 2001 that her family back home with limited English had no way of finding out if she was okay. Today the station broadcasts for 24 hours across the US and 40 other countries. It offers a voice to the Vietnamese-American population in Oklahoma City and is also essential in disseminating critical information to residents who have limited English skills.

Community radio stations in El Salvador and have made a positive impact in the lives of young adult working at these stations. In a country with high rates of violence and youth gang membership, stations provide a way for young adults to find community, value, and a means of expression. Some of the station's local reporting has overcome government and corporate interference.

There isn’t a lot of media outlets providing age-appropriate news for children. So, four journalists came together to create “KidNuz,” a children’s news podcast. The show has garnered thousands of listeners. “Although KidNuz's listenership is mainly between the ages of eight and 12, children as young as five, and even adults, listen in.” The podcast provides children with news about “about politics, current events, or science, with inspiring humanity stories, for example, about people doing charitable work or helping animals.”

Operating as a low-power FM radio station, Detroit’s 96.7 WNUC provides an independent platform for community voices and interests. Programming ranges from shows focusing on Detroit’s musical legacy to discussions of environmental justice issues.

After an economic downturn, several community-based radio stations have sprung up, offering an alternative to commercial stations and allowing Argentinians, especially those in rural areas, the opportunity to come together and choose what they want to listen to and talk about. One organization called DTL! collective helps organizations set up community radio stations by providing a transmitter, antenna, and other hardware.

In response to media censorship and the persecution of journalists in Syria, a Paris-based radio station has trained journalists in Syria and are broadcasting news into Syria by satellite over the FM airwaves.

Based on an approach that one participant termed “what gets measured gets done,” several Canadian media watchers and news organizations are prodding journalists to quote more women in news stories by auditing sources' genders in past stories. One Montreal Gazette reporter's tally of her newsroom's stories increased how many women were quoted in stories from 29% of stories to 42%. The Gender Gap Tracker tracked Canada's seven most influential news platforms, and saw an increase in the use of female sources in stories by 4% in less than two years, nearly as big a gain as in the previous 26 years.

A group of women called The Women, Food and Agriculture Network was founded in 1998 in Iowa to educate female landowners about land conservation and implementing sustainable practices on their farms. The group has held more than 250 meetings since 2009, reaching more than 3,800 women landowners—and their surveys find that after a one-day session, 50-70% of the women go on to take an action to improve conservation on their property. Longterm, this group empowers women to play a bigger role in the future of agriculture in the state.

A public transportation system just for women has been developed in New Guinea in response to the extreme harassment that women face. Launched in 2014, the program called "Meri Seif (“Woman Safe”) now serves 170,000 female riders annually and has more than 10 buses. The program is still growing, as more buses get donated, but women already praise the program for increasing their sense of safety.

In the Kutupalong Refugee Camp in Bangladesh, Rohingya women are overcoming the societal restraints that bound them at home in Myanmar and becoming leaders and change-makers in their community. Despite resistance from the men, hundreds of women in the camp banded together to form a group called Shanti Mohila. This allowed them to push for more peace and justice and issues like domestic violence, and they even received support from Legal Action Worldwide to prosecute crimes against the Rohingya people.