INFORMATION SAVES LIVES
Map of radio stations, studios and broadcast coverage in Haiti
News You Can Use
With a team of local reporters, Internews is producing a daily humanitarian news broadcast, Enfomasyon Nou Dwe Konnen (News You Can Use) currently airing on 25 local radio stations.The programs (in Creole) can be found on the Enfomasyon Nou Dwe Konnen web site.
Listen to samples of the program in English
The show began January 21 on 11 stations, and reports critical information about water distribution points, status of displaced persons camps, public health advisories, and more.
Most stations air the programming as soon as it arrives, via CDs distributed personally by the Internews team. Stations typically air Enfomasyon Nou Dwe Konnen four to six times a day, at regularly scheduled timeslots.
Internews has hired local reporters and producers to gather news and produce the programming, and is also providing humanitarian reporting training to the staff.
Distributing Wind-up Radios
With so many homes and property destroyed, many Haitians no longer have access to radios to listen to the news, or have run out of batteries for the small radios they have. In January, Internews distributed nearly 9,000 wind-up radios provided by the U.S. Military, through 19 local radio station partners. The stations signed agreements to distribute the radios to those most in need, with an emphasis on getting radios in the hands of women-headed households and the highly vulnerable. The radios do not require batteries or electricity – they are powered through a built-in hand crank.
Getting Haitians the Information They Need
Our team in Haiti is working with local media outlets, many of which lost reporters and facilities to the earthquake, to assess their needs. Internews is also interviewing survivors, to determine how people are getting news, so that information can be best targeted to the local population.
By serving as a communications link between providers of aid and local media, Internews ensures that Haitian reporters receive and distribute aid information – such as the mobile short code 4636 launched by Ushahidi, which helps gather reports of local needs.
Coordinating Humanitarian Media Assistance
Internews is a founding member of the Inter-Agency Group on Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities (CDAC) that includes UNOCHA, key agencies, such as the Red Cross and Save the Children, and other media assistance providers, such as the BBC World Service Trust and the Thomson Reuters Foundation. UNOCHA has charged Internews as the lead agency on the ground to coordinate CDAC members’ humanitarian information and media assistance activities in order to achieve maximum impact across the Haiti’s ravaged media landscape.
CDAC - Haiti Flyer (PDF)
Funders
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) helped fund Internews response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti and continues to be the main funder of its ongoing humanitarian media program there.
Other funders of Internews' initial humanitarian response work include the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; the MacArthur Foundation; the Arca Foundation; the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Fund, a donor advised fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation; and individual donors with the assistance of Global Giving.
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT INTERNEWS' WORK IN HAITI
