Voice to action Community radio empowering rural communities: Cases in the English-speaking Caribbean

Empowerment is about the degree to which communities own and manage their resources and the extent to which such resources translate to the individual and collective benefit of the community. Community radio systems are celebrated as excellent participatory communication tools providing both access to information and a voice to poor marginalized communities. Rooted in a design of methodological eclecticism and serendipity, this qualitative case study of five rural-based community radio stations from across the English speaking Caribbean sought to determine the degree to which the components of empowerment – increased access, increased capacity, informed decision making, levels of participation, and action – impact both the individual and collective levels of empowerment within communities served by the community radio system.
The study finds that while the degree to which a community feels empowered is positively relational to the higher degree of ownership of community resources, it is not as clear cut that the community radio stations by themselves guarantee higher success rates at promoting ownership, participation, and empowerment. New knowledge and insights emerging include the development of a Caribbean typology for community communication and empowerment, and evidence that pre-existing power-relations significantly determine positioning and influence within an empowerment power-participation matrix. A striking conclusion is that those who participate at the highest level of decision making not only benefit individually, but gain more power over the collective. A corollary is higher level skills migration and acute implications for sustainability of both the empowered individual and community.