Feba India’s Udaan ("Fly High") radio project shares Christian teaching with youth and young adults, alongside content on social issues and income generation opportunities.

In a certain town in Uttar Pradesh, it’s very difficult to pick up Udaan’s shortwave signal, but a local shopkeeper has come up with an ingenious solution: listen to the programmes from a micro SD card on your mobile phone. 

Chatur listens to the Udaan programmes using a memory card on his mobile phone.

Passionate about income generation and reasoning that this initiative is part and parcel of being a Christian, the shopkeeper began loading Udaan’s programmes onto mobile phones brought into his shop for repair. When he saw customers responding well to these programmes, he began distributing mobile phone chips containing Udaan’s broadcast content, in an informal partnership with the station.  

Udaan regularly hosts listeners’ conferences to meet audience members and find out more about their needs and preferences, as well as seekers’ conferences for people who have contacted the station, wanting to find out more about Jesus.

Udaan programme producer, Prakash addresses a listener group in Uttar Pradesh 

The impact of these conferences is striking. In the first six months of 2016, around 220 people attended such events. 31 of these became Christians and 19 asked to be baptised. Remarkably, eight of the new Christians and nine of the people being baptised all came from this shopkeeper’s town in Uttar Pradesh! They had heard Udaan’s programmes through the mobile phone chips, rather than the shortwave transmissions.

We are delighted and encouraged to see how God is blessing this innovative approach.  

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For more inspirational stories on communities creating change using radio see our Stories blog.  

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