A capacity development program on rural ComDev is being undertaken by the College of Development Communication (CDC-UPLB) in the southern part of Bangladesh. The first training was held last June 29-July1, 2015 among rural radio station managers and broadcasters of Krishi Radio, Radio Nalta, Radio Sundarban and Loko Betar (see the Bangladesh Community Radio Portal).
Using the Communication for Rural Development Sourcebook as a main reference, the program entails six monthly missions that include three-day training workshops, each focusing on one major step in the Comdev planning process.
Resource persons do face-to-face training each time, use worksheets for exercises, then allow the participants to work on the real outputs once they go back to their radio stations. Participants are currently doing the situational analysis applying the principle and techniques learned. As the training session have to be translated in Bengali, a national consultant links up with CDC-UPLB for virtual assistance on behalf of the participants.
This capacity development is an offshoot of the Collaborative Change Communication initiative launched by FAO and the College of Development Communication of Los Banos (CDC-UPLB).
It is being implemented as part of the Rural Radio Initiative of the Coastal Climate Resilient Infrastructure Project (RRI-CCRIP) of IFAD, in partnership with the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) and the Agriculture Information Service (AIS) of Bangladesh.