By Dawn Marie Roper

HelpAge International and Panos Caribbean have just completed 5 days of media communication training with a group of elderly people in Haiti. Twelve participants from communities most affected by the earthquake spent the 5 days at Panos Caribbean learning how to produce their own radio and TV programmes. They were also taught sales and persuasion skills such as how to explain themselves quickly for fund-raising and advocacy.

The participants are heads of civil society organisations for the elderly in Port-au-Prince, Carrefour, Croix-de-bouquets, Jacmel, Leogane, Petit Goave, Grand Goave.

Cossy Roosevelt, Programme Officer for Media, Community and Environment at Panos Caribbean, helped to facilitate the media training which started on February 14. He explained that it is one of Panos Caribbean’s “Communication for All Ages” programmes.

“This one is geared towards building the media production capacity of people of the third age – the people over age 60. It will give them practice and the knowledge to do their own radio productions and broadcasting.”

On the last day of the training the participants produced three, 15-minute programmes about health and the situation of older people living under the tents and other issues. The productions were done in the newly constructed radio production studio at Panos Caribbean, which was funded by HelpAge International.

Raymond Lachapelle, Information Education Communication Co-ordinator at HelpAge International, explained that the media training is part of a longer term communication capacity building programme for the elderly in Haiti by HelpAge International. This programme will extend for more than 12 months. During this time the recipients of the training will be producing a series of radio and TV programmes to be aired on Radio Soleil and TV Soleil (part of the Catholic media group).

Lachapelle said the idea for media training of the elderly stemmed from a successful series of radio programmes with the old people living in the earthquake camps. “This is a follow-up to the radio programmes produced by HelpAge called ‘Koze Granmoun – Pawol Timoun’, which means ‘Old people and young people exchanging information’. We started this radio broadcast in the camps from July 2010. The response was extremely positive. Seeing the success of ‘Koze Granmoun’ HelpAge decided that the old people themselves should be given the chance to make their own productions.”

HelpAge needed a communication capacity building partner to carry out the programme.
“For this project we needed a partner with experience in communication training for media and working with marginalised groups. Our investigations told us that Panos did this. We saw Panos’ productions and publications and decided that this is what we needed.”

HelpAge also approached Radio Soleil and TV Soleil (Catholic owned media entities with an interest in publicising the issues of marginalised groups) to negotiate air time. Lachapelle commented on the level of involvement by the elderly when HelpAge first started doing radio programmes with them in the camps.
“The very old and the very young are very enthusiastic about sharing information. There was a lot of enthusiasm and energy in the old about doing radio programmes,” he said.

This was evident from the participants in the workshop at Panos. Rev. Pasteur Pierre Lyrius from Leogane was among the most enthusiastic of the participants. He wrote and performed two jingles for the radio programme which he and fellow participants produced.

Céréné Jean Borgeat, President of Association Communale Personnes Agées Grand Goave, said when he came to the training for the first hour, he felt that his life was changed.
“Now I have good knowledge in communication,” he said enthusiastically. “I believe I can change everything now that I know how to explain to people about how to manage their lives.”

Daniella Masson, Vice President of Association des Personnes Agées de Carrefour, said the training encouraged her to go back to school. She plans to use her newly acquired communication skills to increase the membership of her organisation.

The 5-day training is the first of three phases of a year-long project to get the issues of elderly people more into the media. The other two phases will be series of the radio and then TV productions that will come from the participants over the next 12 months.

Lachapelle said that HelpAge plans to monitor and evaluate the project by assessing the number and quality of the productions, and secondly, the sustainability of the project. “I want to see the organisations involved in the media training reach the stage where they are comparing their achievements – a kind of friendly competition to motivate all the civil society organisations for the elderly,” Lachapelle said.

He wants people to know that the elderly do have an important role in Haiti’s development.
“Don’t forget the older people. They can continue to help the country,” he said.

Dawn Marie Rope is Panos Caribbean Writer (In Haiti)

This article is provided free of charge by Panos Caribbean.

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