Since community radio has already been defined, I shall not dwell any longer on that but rather go to using radio to empower and engage communities. Radio is a very powerful tool of communication. One voice has the power to speak to millions of people about particular issues concerning and affecting the community. For those of us doing human rights work, this then becomes an important engagement tool.

Radio helps us educate people about their rights in various ways: through interactive talk shows, spot messages, feature stories, sponsorship e.g., news sponsorship, etc. The advantage of using radio is its affordability even in very poor households. In Uganda, even the poorest and remotest located households will have radio sets in their houses. And so, when community radio is used to inform, educate and entertain people, you can be sure that you will have an audience listening/tuning in.

In December last year, I travelled to Gulu in northern Uganda to visit internally displaced people's camps on a CVT funded programme. Gulu is a region that is recovering from more than 2 decades of rebel actrocities of the Lords Resistance Army rebels. Because there are over 50 IDP camps scattered in northern Uganda, we used a community radio station based in Gulu to mobilise clients to gather at 1 camp for focus group discussions. The turn up was amazing with many clients saying that they found this kind of meeting very useful in their recovery from torture. We were able to achieve this through the use of radio to mobilise people.