Community Media 4 Kenya (CM4K) is a partnership network comprising our students and marginalised communities, practitioners, NGOs and civil society and government representatives in Kenya. Students join together to raise money and seek to use their skills, expertise, knowledge and enthusiasm to make a difference by sharing these with our Kenyan partners. Adopting a 'training the trainers' approach, the project facilitates capacity building workshops that enable our partners to continue to work on empowering local community voices through digital communications.
In the developed world we tend to take ICT for granted. They have an ever increasing influence on the lives that we lead. From mobile smart phones in our pockets and bags; to tablets, laptops and PCs we use at home, at school/college/uni and at work; to the high definition smart televisions in many domestic environments - ICT are ubiquitous and information, media and communications and the capacity and capability to use them effectively are resources central to citizenship in our increasingly global society.
Community Media 4 Kenya has been set up to do something about this and make a difference. Community media students from the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Brighton. Since 2011 the project has been working with rural communities and marginalised youth groups in Kenya. The project is well placed to explore, with our Kenyan partners, ways in which ICT can be made accessible so that Kenyan communities can harness the benefits of the digital age to address both basic needs and developing local economies by supporting small businesses, social innovation and entrepreneurs.
The project has developing a network of participating partners to explore ways in which Community Media Centres (CMCs) can support socio-economic development, cultural understanding and communication and thereby improve the quality of life for Kenyan communities.
The funds the project raise enables us to provide ICT equipment; books & an extensive 'training the trainer's programme so that local people can build capacity by training others and in so doing empower their own communities.
In addition to these activities CM4K is raising funds and resources to support a day orphanage in Ruiru and a school in Londiani - both marginalised communities.
The community technology training the trainer projects are grounded in community-based participatory learning techniques and are designed to facilitate knowledge exchange, cultural understanding, community empowerment & sustainable partnerships that promote socio-economic development.
Community Media 4 Kenya project was the initiative of Dr Peter Day who has developed the project from its experimental early days to the established status that the project now enjoys as part of the undergraduate curriculum. The project uses the Partnership Education: Action Research & Learning Scenarios (PEARLS) community-based learning approach.
You can find out more about the project, and read the thoughts of the university students, that have taken part on the project, through their Community Media 4 Kenay Blog
This was the first video produced by the 2014 capacity building workshop held by CM4K in Nairobi in partnership with the International Youth Council of Kenya. CM4K uses a collaborative learning approach that is grounded in the traditions of participatory community media.
To see more Community Media 4 Kenya videos, you can visit their youtube channel.
