Profile
Shahzad is a typical Christian who has a bachelor's (and possibly masters) theological or business or science degree BUT is producing media content for a Christian media organisation. Shahzad’s main qualification for being employed was because a) he was a Christian and b) several of the organisation’s staff spoke well of Shahzad’s family and church activities.
This is not to disparage Shahzad. He is earnest, intelligent, committed to mission, is willing to take some risks in his attempts to strengthen relationships with the hostile majority religion that can make life difficult for Christians.
Shahzad learnt basic media skills on the job from a senior person who learnt his basic media skills on the job. So his media skills are handed-down ‘wisdom’ with little knowledge or understanding of media theory. Certainly, basic communication theory such as the Diffusion of Innovation or decision-making pathways was unknown to Shahzad and, thus, neither purposively or strategically applied to his media content.
Shahzad was happy to present his once-a-week radio program that played music, broadcast greetings from listeners, and every now and then interview a guest such as a doctor about basic health matters that the doctor usually brought to the microphone. Because his name was known as a name that Christian people use, Shahzad was easily identified as a Christian so people would telephone him off air to ask questions about his faith, request prayer for healing, or ask for a Bible. Usually, these callers were young women and that posed a high degree of risk on many levels, not least because the cell-phone number he was giving on air was his personal number.
A consultant was asked to give the media project direction and create an environment for expansion.
Over three years the consultant mentored Shahzad through the following to match his newly formed Job Description:
- Missiology
Shahzad learnt that a Bible-centred approach to Christian media outreach justified a process of leading people from one stage of awareness to another. It involved contextualising Christian witness (not merely language) into the cultural context of his listeners. It required commitment to Integral Mission (evangelism and compassion work holistically) and a belief that Matt 5:16,17 is valid (the Ross James version: Jesus told us to be generous in our Christ-centred lives and people will notice and give glory to God). It also means meeting peoples’ felt and real needs.
- Health promotion
Any action for social change requires supporting intervention at the levels of legislation and regulation (government), community awareness and mobilisation, individual behaviour change, introducing laws or policies or standards that reinforce positive change (e.g. creating smoke-free zones in airports, hospitals, universities etc), and training and supporting service providers to understand the need of change and to support that change (e.g. health workers—theoretically!—no longer smoke and advise others not to smoke cigarettes).
- Community development
The role of community decision-making processes, bottom up initiatives and planning and mobilisation. How to ensure that communities are not left out of a media partnership but have full representation. Inclusiveness of people of different faiths, gender, and disability.
- Social capital
Understanding social capital, and applying initiatives that facilitate processes of unity, cohesion, volunteerism.
- Theory of change
Understanding how capacity building leads to empowerment which leads to behaviour change which leads to social capital.
- Ethnography
How to learn about cultural patterns and values in order to contextualise and make messages.
- Partnership development
The idea that the media organisation does not and should not do all the work in a project. So Shahzad had to learn how to identify partnering non-media organisations that could contribute: a local church to take on the responsibility of a radio program in their town, an educational institution that would provide guest speakers and offer scholarships to needy listeners, businesses willing to sponsor cricket carnivals or talent quests, a local council willing to donate the se of a sports ground for free and so on.
- Partnership management
Facilitating a strategic plan; developing processes that kept partners focussed and collaborative on the same goal. Managing expectations, facilitating decisions and actions that demonstrate how more stable agencies could assist less stable agencies; ensuring that all involved in the partnership received due recognition and satisfaction that their purposes were being achieved because of the partnership. Leading partnership meetings (the role of a chair; ensuring all parties have a voice; managing agenda and meeting- or partnership-related documentation).
- Communication theory
Why is media not as influential as people (used to) think? What is the role of media in decision-making? How do we use media to provide audiences with data that can be used in the social learning and decision-making processes that take place in families, social circles and wider community?
- Project management
Writing MOUs, developing strategic plans, monitoring partnership performance (but remembering they are partners, not employees).
- Participatory mapping
Learning how to use two or three community assessment or mapping tools, then facilitating workshops of community members to map their community development needs or issues.
- Training
Knowing the content of prepared training manuals in media content creation, revising them to be contextual to the situation, then delivering and evaluating training. Monitoring the media training needs or professional development needs of relevant media partnership members.
- Web and social media
Understanding then applying the various streaming and social media platforms or applications that can be integrated with radio programming.
- Writing community service announcements
Write Community Service Announcements that meet broadcast standards of health communication.
- Outcome evaluation
Understanding how relevant tools can be used for given purposes, and to have the ability to brief an outside consultant on the parameters of a required evaluation.
- Write grant proposals
Understanding what the donor is interested in; writing the proposal to meet donors’ parameters; being competent in developing a log frame.
- Donor management
Collecting and writing stories or producing audio or visual content that reports achievements back to donors.
- Locally-sourced financial sustainability
Sourcing funds for local costs from local donors. Shahzad goes into a media partnership in a new town with this message:We’re not giving you any money to do this! You must have the vision from God to do this. We will pay for the first year of programming (usually one hour a week on a commercial radio station) but that is all. We will also pay for our travel and accommodation here to provide training and to be on air with you for the first two months. But you have to find the money from here, locally, to pay any other costs that you incur.