Children, Family and Radio

Thai Youth Community Radio Program Helps Build up Their Warm Family

By Jaruwan Supolrai

In Thailand now, local radio programs are mushrooming in every corner of this Land of Smiles. Thai youth are getting involved in this sort of project and they produce many interesting programs. Family is an interesting issue that they are currently working on. Do you ever think that this activity can help build up a warm family in their community? If yes, how? This article has the answer for you!

Every Saturday afternoon, a youth group in a small community of Tha Sao in Sai Yok District, Kanchanaburi Province, western Thailand, run a radio program about the warm family through their local community radio station. This activity is supported by the Human Mapping Project of the Institute of Nutrition, Mahidol University in Nakorn Prathom.

“I am proud to be a part of this program to help bring happiness and warmth to the families in my community”, said 14-year-old Kru ‘Niko’ Ranad, one of budding little DJs who works on this warm family program. Each person in a team is given different jobs like search for news or information and interview people, but they work together as a final product.

“It is very great for me to hear the feedbacks from my friends, family and people in my community and it is a sign that they are being aware of a warm family issue and they want to have a warm family”, Niko added with smiles.

Most of the information that they talk on the radio program is basically about the ways to a warm family, which are concerned with food security, nutrition, sanitary or even suggestions about travel places that the family can go for a holiday or local wisdom knowledge that should be maintained.

Another Little DJ Lai “Lai” Wanthong, 17 years old who used to dream of becoming a DJ said that,” I was very excited and nervous when I first was on air and another exciting activity is to go out to interview the ‘model warm family’. Being a part in this radio program is very challenging for me, it taught me how to manage my time between school and my work and I feel that I am more responsible.“

“Our main objective of the project is to promote the happiness and strengthen the relationship of the family. By that objective, we believe the youth will be the best target group to link with the family. The children and youth will also be the future of the families and communities”, explained, 59-year-old Ajaan Suvannee Promchan, a project investigator who works at the Field Research Station of Institute of Nutrition, Mahidol University in Ubon Ratchathani.

Before the little DJ team had a chance to work on their radio program, the research project team organized a training workshop for them to lead them the way to work as a DJ. The workshop provided them with how to write news, how to search for news, how to make a adverting spot and as well as how to write a radio feature story.

The result of this activity turned out quite great! The children enjoy working on their radio program and the parents also help them to search for news and interesting issues to talk through the radio program or even teachers and friends at school also are kind enough providing them with their useful information for their work.

And more importantly those people always encourage the little DJs to work hard and follow up with the program. This shows that the project can be a part of helping building up a warm family to people in their community.

It is good that the youth group enjoy working on the radio program to promote the warm family’s campaign in the community. It is also beneficial that the children have had chances to improve their public speaking potentials before these little hands will be moving to the real world of work.

That is a story of a group of ‘young people’ who are filled high energy to work on the radio in order to strengthen the relationship of people in their community. On the other hand, they are just a small group who might not be able to make a big change, but it is believed that these young little hearts are filled with hopes and dreams to make a big difference in the future.