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| Saathi Sanga Manka Kura team sharing about the radio show to the audience |
The major topics that the radio hosts discuss about are rape cases, cyber crimes, contraceptives, mental health, education, superstition, child marriage, menstruation, drug abuse, child trafficking, safe sex, coping with failure, dealing with peers, corporal punishments and many more. The team of SSMK shared the letters they receive for their show on their presentation and these letters were about child labor, child trafficking, corporal punishment and sexual harassment. The victims i.e., the adolescents, who wrote those letters admitted that they had been mentally destroyed, scared and their self esteem had been devastated. According to them, they have 7.2 million regular young listeners in Nepal. ‘Saathi Sanga Manka Kura’ is one of the longest running radio series in Nepal. Started in 2001 as +UNICEF Nepal’s communicative initiative, it has completed 13 years of regular broadcasting. Admitting on a lot of obstacles faced when the show was initiated as sexual and reproductive health and rights was, and still is up to a large extent, a subject of taboo. Also sharing was nation owned radio Radio Nepal had censored some words or some topics from their show and people from rural areas blamed that the show filled their children’s mind with wrong things. Despite the obstacles, the show continued to air and has been successful in its objectives so far.
Some of the objectives of the show are to equip young people of Nepal with knowledge and life skills, to build self confidence and reduce the chance of risky behavior and to empower young people to speak for themselves. Other objectives include to encourage young people to initiate social change activities, to promote and environment of positive discussion and to debate on issues that really matter to the young. SSMK have been able to bring a lot of positive changes in the society and are happy that the show has been a cause for awareness initiatives in different places of Nepal.
Talking about their future plans, they are starting to reach adolescents through radio program in local languages. SSMK team have already been creating an environment of communication between policy makers and adolescents. It plans to establish youth journalist networks and make ‘Saathi Sanga Manka Kura’ popular in social media as well. They are also going to launch their app for android users very soon.
Each person attending the workshop got a stamp in their hand and a bookmark both having ‘Saathi Sanga Manka Kura’ written in them. The workshop was really interactive and they answered the questions although the number of questions was few. Finally they said that their motto was to make adolescents realize that they are the ROLE MODELS and NOT the VICTIMS !
+Ojaswie Acharya an A-level Graduate and teenager currently volunteers for Envisage with Sage project of +View Your Choice- तपाईको सोचाई हाम्रो रोजाई -
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