Profiles

Sara Farid — Reaching Women through Radio

Sara Farid records an interview with a man who lost his house in the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. Photo: Lisa Upton/Internews

When Sara Farid started working with Internews on the women’s radio program, Meri Awaz Suno (“Hear My Voice”) in August 2003, she hadn’t had any experience working with radio. Now she says she has "a great passion for radio." She joined the team as a reporter/producer, then worked her way up to senior producer and then to executive producer of Meri Awaz Suno.

In 2005, Farid participated in a six-day Internews training program on reporting about HIV/AIDS. Following the course, she made a documentary focusing on the life of Shukria Gul, a woman from Lahore who is living with HIV and working to educate others about AIDS.

"After meeting Shukria Gul who is HIV positive and a normal human being, I realized there is no need to attach any stigma to such people. She is as normal as I am. In fact, she is extraordinary because of the work she is doing," said Farid.

Farid has also produced programs on child labor, honor killings and forced marriages. "All men cannot reach women in our society. There are certain women, they don’t let men come in their houses. But we have an edge, we can go there . . .  so we can come aboard with the story."

The style of Farid’s documentary on child labor was unconventional by Pakistani standards – there were no "experts" or analysts interviewed for the program. Rather, the documentary focused on the life of a 16-year-old boy who has been working to support his family since the age of eight. "Our basic idea of a story is to give voice to the unheard— that's why we try to get personal stories and then get the social sector’s and government's viewpoint," she remarked.

After the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, Farid helped bring news and information to the hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors, many of them still residing in IDP camps. She also worked on a project with Meri Awaz Suno to produce a series of radio dramas, with the goal of reaching millions of people, many of whom have no formal education, with an entertainment format that contains social messages. The dramas focused on topics such as honor killings, HIV/AIDS, and girls' education.

Early in 2006, Sara Farid switched from Meri Awaz Suno to Internews Pakistan's TV documentary series on rights and rules of law issues. She produced three documentaries with Pakistan’s GeoNews TV channel before leaving Internews to join an upcoming Pakistani TV channel, Dawn TV. Farid credits Internews' with contributing to her meteoric rise as a broadcast journalist.

Meri Awaz Suno was started with funding from the US Agency for International Development and is currently supported by the Department of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the U.S. State Department, and by the Pluralism Fund.