We've all heard the saying, "Two or three are better than one," right? We know that we can't do the whole job of reaching the hard-to-reach on our own. Partnership with other groups is vital. Mark Taylor, International Ministry Director, and other Feba ministry staff had lots to say about partnership at Feba's recent AGM.
Mark says: "This strategy of partnering with an organisation which has credibility in the local community and infrastructure is something Feba UK believes in."
From partnering with a community development project in Nepal, to providing engineering support to radio ministries in Africa, to using internet radio and Facebook to reach youth in the Middle East – working with other Christians is such an integral part of Feba’s ministry that it’s difficult to think of a place where Feba isn’t working in partnership!
(Listen to the audio using the icon above.)
Education through FM station development
Tim Miller: “One other thing we are doing in [Sudan] is on FM, with a group called Cush4Christ. They went on air at the end of last year and we’ve partnered in that ministry. They are trying to build up their programme schedule. I was able to put them in touch with a group, Southern Sudan Interactive Radio Instruction. Essentially what they do is primary level education over the radio. As it happens they were looking for a group to partner in that area of Sudan. They are now talking with each other. So what’s the significance of this? Well, in 2007 in southern Sudan, only half of all children finished primary level education. This is on the back of a very long civil war where whole generations of people didn’t get an education. So this potential partnership offers Cush4Christ a great opportunity of offering their local community something that is really needed.”
Programme production
Tim Miller: “Based in the Horn of Africa is one of our major production partners. For a long time they have had a very healthy letter response. About a year ago they decided to start airing on their programmes a mobile phone number that listeners could contact their producers with. A few months after they launched this initiative, the number of letters they received had declined. They were then receiving about 300 letters a month. In the same month they received over a thousand phone calls from listeners, and interestingly only one email!”
Internet and Facebook
Jerry Wilson: “The internet project we have running is in partnership with a subdivision of IBRA [Media and other partners]. It’s for youth. The majority that are tuning in to this are in Egypt and parts of the Middle East, to interact with the online generation of Muslims. We’ve learned a lot and we still have a long way to go. The original concept was to give youth an open forum, a kind of online café if you will - where they could go to listen to music, listen to short… inserts. I hesitate to say programmes because it’s not traditional radio. The topics were those that appeal to the age group: relationships, education, fashion, all this sort of stuff. There were open-ended questions which stimulated responses and the listeners discussed these with the presenters and each other.
“We are finding that Facebook is actually a clever way of making progress and attracting young people. It’s a better approach for the youth interacting than the forums had been. Forums which four years ago we thought would be great on the internet are no longer – they’re passé. Facebook seems to be where it’s at. In many ways social networking is the new name for follow up or better still follow through. To help the team grasp the concept of daily building relationships online and being able to share more deeply about their daily lives including how Jesus makes a difference.”
Health and community development
Mark Taylor: “We are re-focusing on the north of India. Our desire to get closer and closer to the listener’s world is seen clearly in India. In the north of India, there are huge numbers of unreached people. It’s still amongst the world’s most hard-to-reach. What does that mean in reality? Feba UK is partnering with Feba India and a local NGO which runs a hospital and community development projects across north India to establish community radio initiatives in some of the most oppressively hard-to-reach parts. We have signed a memorandum of understanding, and Jon Hargreaves is leading this development project with much enthusiasm.
“In Nepal it’s local partnership. A strategy of partnering with a local organisation that has a track record of credibility and with an infrastructure that comes with them. This is something that Feba believes in doing and we want to work with local partners wherever we can. It has already worked in Nepal, and a lot of what we are modelling for north India is based on our experience already in Nepal. And with our partner HDCS, this has resulted in two radio stations already operating, and of course we are looking very carefully now at a third station.”