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Why South Africa?

South African children live in challenging times. There is a vast gap between rich and poor, levels of violent crime are high, and one in ten young South Africans aged between 15-24 is HIV-positive. One in four young women is HIV-positive by her 21st birthday.

One million South African children live in homes where there are no literate adults. This poses a significant challenge for children to make the best use of learning and development opportunities.

Why Radio?

Radio is the most popular medium in South Africa. The majority of households have at least one working radio set in their home.

Radio is a powerful medium that can be used creatively to engage, inform, inspire, and educate young people. Radio is a source of information and a companion, even a friend. It connects us to each other and can broaden horizons and introduce young people to new ideas.

Projects in South Africa

The Radio Workshop Show

The Radio Workshop, the Children’s Radio Foundation's nationally broadcast radio program, airs weekly in South Africa. The Radio Workshop broadcasts every Saturday at 12 noon on SAFM. Hosted by Lesedi Mogoatlhe, the show offers younger listeners a mix of current affairs, entertainment, and information, and showcases the stories of young people across the country.

Content for the show is created by a radio production team, and by children taking part in school- and hospital-based radio training workshops. Each episode is also made available as a podcast, and is posted on the Radio Workshop's interactive website. To listen to episodes of the Radio Workshop, click here.

The Radio Workshop Website

Our website, www.radioworkshop.org, serves as a home base for our nationally broadcast radio show. It allows users to stream the audio content and also to download the show as an mp3 file. All audio content is made available to individuals and broadcasters, free of charge.

Content for the website is generated by adult producers and children, and includes audio books, features, and news. The website allows us to enhance the Radio Workshop show, supplying users with additional information, opportunities related to specific stories, and links to refer them to related content.

Hospital Radio

The Children's Radio Foundation has launched a radio project in Cape Town's Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital, the largest pediatric hospital on the African continent. In partnership with the University of Cape Town's Children's Institute and the School of Adolescent and Child Health, we hold regular workshops with Red Cross patients to produce audio content to be aired within the hospital, via the in-house radio station, and externally, on our nationally broadcast radio show.

The content produced by child patients includes a wide variety of audio diaries, stories, features, reports, and interviews. To hear some of the hospital radio productions, click here.

When the project is fully rolled out, each patient will receive an MP3 player upon admission to the hospital so that they can receive the audio content on offer.

Ingwavuma Rural Children's Radio Partnership

Ingwavuma is a rural area in northeast KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Children grow up amidst extensive poverty, malaria risk, and a burgeoning HIV epidemic.

This prompted the creation of a partnership in 2005 between Zisize Educational Trust (a local community-based organisation), the Children's Institute at the University of Cape Town, and a local primary school, to document through audio, children's experiences of growing up in a time of AIDS in rural South Africa.

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Ingwavuma Rural Children's Radio Partnership

The Radio Workshop has joined this partnership to support a series of radio training workshops to enhance the children's ability to produce their own radio stories.

These audio features contribute to the unique and limited pool of child-produced content about life in rural South Africa and are broadcast on a local community radio station as well as online. The audio stories offer valuable insights into issues affecting children and serve as an important tool for child advocacy groups and those seeking to promote a culture of children's rights.