Airwaves cut distances in rural Peru

IPS News.net writes about the Onda Rural communication for development project lead by World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters’, the Latin American Association for Radio Education and the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

The project, which is mostly targeting primary school children through radio programmes, addresses the question of protecting the environment by keeping traditional knowledge and customs alive.

Unfortunately, part of the project, which was developed for an early warning system for weather events, came to an end due to lack of funding in spite of its impact and innovativeness.

Communication played a key role in that initiative: local residents trained to read the data from the weather stations set up in their villages relayed the information to the government’s national meteorology and hydrology service.