Awards to three Andalusian community radios for their work and commitment to citizens

 The current affairs series Acercando la ciudadanía (Approaching citizenship) from Onda Color has been awarded with the Andalusian Government’s First Prize of Andalusian Local Audiovisual Communication on 29th December 2014.

According to the Ministry of Presidency, the jury has awarded Acercando la ciudadanía on the category of news radio programmes -particularly contents devoted to the 2014 European elections- “for promoting citizens’ participation, with explanations that were transparent, didactic and specific. The programme has based its contents on the slogan Information is power. We help you to exercise this power.”

 You can listen to the programme here. (In Spanish only)

These programmes look into the electoral programme of 10 political parties on 10 different topics: cooperation, economics and taxation, education and research, employment and youth, environment and energy, media, vision for the European Union, citizen participation and democracy, and health, disabilities and housing policies. They were broadcast the month preceding the European elections on the hour during the entire Onda Color’s schedule.

“As usually happens in community radio, the citizens broadcasters decided on the running order and the content that offered voters key information about the political parties proposals in specific areas”.

As the citizenship is in charge of decision making in the radio, it was decided to give it a relevance than other types of media have not wanted to give it. To do so seems to be the most responsible and useful course of action”, explains the President of Onda Color, Alejandro Blanco.

This Andalusian Award, endowed with 4.000 euros, joins the other one awarded by the Association of Municipal and Local Broadcasters (EMA-RTV, in Spanish) to Onda Color in November 2014 for “Social Benefit”  and University of Málaga’s COMandalucía award.

Also, Onda Color was distinguished in summer as Best Association of the Year in its neighbourhood, Palma Palmilla by the local government. Radiópolis and Onda Palmeras are other community media that have also been publicly recognised during last month.