Tag: Dharavi

  • Radio City aims to teach spoken English to 3 million street kids

    Radio City aims to teach spoken English to 3 million street kids

    MUMBAI:  In a first of its kind innovation, Radio City 91.1FM has partnered with cycle candy vendors to create pop-up English schools across Dharavi and like slum areas. Radio reaches more than 99% of India where approximately 30 million children live in slums. Candy vendors on bicycles who visit slum dwellings daily have been provided FM receivers and megaphones and have been incentivised to park their cycles in specific localities every week at a certain time.

    During these time bands, Radio City 91.1FM is airing specially designed lessons on spoken English. Candy being a natural draw for the kids, all the vendors have to do is tune in to Radio City on their FM receivers at the designated time slot, play the on-air English lesson and hand out free candy to every kid who sits through it.

    Initiated in the slums of Mumbai, the network looks to scale the program up to 10 cities to begin with.In a country where the knowledge of English is an economic enabler, Radio City looks to use their reach to broadcast primary lessons in spoken English.

    Speaking about the initiative, Radio City 91.1FM CEo Abraham Thomas said, “Candy Class is an ambitious project and we have rolled out the first phase. Dharavi, as one of Mumbai’s largest slums, seemed to be the right place to start our efforts to give back to Mumbai in a special way under the ambit of Rag Rag Mein Daude City. Using the power and reach of radio to make a difference to the lives of these children might help them gather a lifeskill that they might not otherwise have been fortunate enough to get”.

    Radio City has launched a promotional campaign to stimulate this initiative and will follow up with on-ground promotions and special activities for children conducted in slum settlements by radio jockeys and other personnel. The idea for Candy Class was developed in partnership with GREY group India and looks to impact 3,000,000 children nationally. ACORN Foundation India, affiliated to ACORN International, is partnering on the activity in order to help build a sustainable model to popularise and scale up this project in Dharavi.

    “What’s really interesting is the way this initiative brings together the power of radio with the cycle candy vendors for a common purpose. Candy Class is not elaborate, does not require huge infrastructure and investments, yet is incredible when you consider the economic and social implications of speaking the language in a country such as ours”, opined Sandipan Bhattacharya, Chief Creative Officer, GREY group India.

    Radio City 91.1 FM is a 100percent owned subsidiary of JagranPrakashan Ltd. Radio City 91.1 FM. India’s first & oldest FM brand has been synonymous with the category since its inception in 2001.  The station has ruled the airwaves, by being No.1 in Mumbai & Bangalore for over 451+ weeks and a consistent top-2 across all other operating markets, reaching out to over 2.2 crore listeners across the country. A pioneer with first on dial, first on web and first to microlocalise themselves, Radio City was the first to introduce humor on radio with BabberSher, first to launch agony aunt solving love problems with Love Guru, first to launch the biggest singing reality show in India with Radio City Super Singer, first ever FM station to recognize the independent singers & musicians with Radio City Freedom Awards and the first FM station to launch internet radio streams in India with 21 stations & counting!

    With a reach across 39 of the most important towns of India, dominating the most important advertiser markets, for the fifth year in a row the brand has been ranked among the Top-25 brands to work for in India by the ‘Great Place to Work’ survey. Led strongly by the philosophy of Rag Rag Mein Daude City, the brand is firmly driven by the passion and the pride that listeners feel for it and associate it to. For further details, log on to www.planetradiocity.com.

    About GREY group India:

    GREY group ranks among the largest global communications companies. Its parent company is WPP (NASDAQ:WPPGY). Under the banner of “GREY Famously Effective Since 1917,” the agency serves a blue-chip client roster of many of the world’s best known companies: Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline, Volvo, Britannia, ITC, Ferrero, Saint Gobain, Wipro, BIG, Dell, Adobe, Mondelez, to name a few. GREY was named ADWEEK’s “Global Agency of the Year” and AD AGE’s “Agency of the Year” in 2014. In Asia, Grey Group covers 28 cities in 16 countries, which includes Bengaluru, Gurgaon and Mumbai in India. www.grey.com/india

  • Radio City aims to teach spoken English to 3 million street kids

    Radio City aims to teach spoken English to 3 million street kids

    MUMBAI:  In a first of its kind innovation, Radio City 91.1FM has partnered with cycle candy vendors to create pop-up English schools across Dharavi and like slum areas. Radio reaches more than 99% of India where approximately 30 million children live in slums. Candy vendors on bicycles who visit slum dwellings daily have been provided FM receivers and megaphones and have been incentivised to park their cycles in specific localities every week at a certain time.

    During these time bands, Radio City 91.1FM is airing specially designed lessons on spoken English. Candy being a natural draw for the kids, all the vendors have to do is tune in to Radio City on their FM receivers at the designated time slot, play the on-air English lesson and hand out free candy to every kid who sits through it.

    Initiated in the slums of Mumbai, the network looks to scale the program up to 10 cities to begin with.In a country where the knowledge of English is an economic enabler, Radio City looks to use their reach to broadcast primary lessons in spoken English.

    Speaking about the initiative, Radio City 91.1FM CEo Abraham Thomas said, “Candy Class is an ambitious project and we have rolled out the first phase. Dharavi, as one of Mumbai’s largest slums, seemed to be the right place to start our efforts to give back to Mumbai in a special way under the ambit of Rag Rag Mein Daude City. Using the power and reach of radio to make a difference to the lives of these children might help them gather a lifeskill that they might not otherwise have been fortunate enough to get”.

    Radio City has launched a promotional campaign to stimulate this initiative and will follow up with on-ground promotions and special activities for children conducted in slum settlements by radio jockeys and other personnel. The idea for Candy Class was developed in partnership with GREY group India and looks to impact 3,000,000 children nationally. ACORN Foundation India, affiliated to ACORN International, is partnering on the activity in order to help build a sustainable model to popularise and scale up this project in Dharavi.

    “What’s really interesting is the way this initiative brings together the power of radio with the cycle candy vendors for a common purpose. Candy Class is not elaborate, does not require huge infrastructure and investments, yet is incredible when you consider the economic and social implications of speaking the language in a country such as ours”, opined Sandipan Bhattacharya, Chief Creative Officer, GREY group India.

    Radio City 91.1 FM is a 100percent owned subsidiary of JagranPrakashan Ltd. Radio City 91.1 FM. India’s first & oldest FM brand has been synonymous with the category since its inception in 2001.  The station has ruled the airwaves, by being No.1 in Mumbai & Bangalore for over 451+ weeks and a consistent top-2 across all other operating markets, reaching out to over 2.2 crore listeners across the country. A pioneer with first on dial, first on web and first to microlocalise themselves, Radio City was the first to introduce humor on radio with BabberSher, first to launch agony aunt solving love problems with Love Guru, first to launch the biggest singing reality show in India with Radio City Super Singer, first ever FM station to recognize the independent singers & musicians with Radio City Freedom Awards and the first FM station to launch internet radio streams in India with 21 stations & counting!

    With a reach across 39 of the most important towns of India, dominating the most important advertiser markets, for the fifth year in a row the brand has been ranked among the Top-25 brands to work for in India by the ‘Great Place to Work’ survey. Led strongly by the philosophy of Rag Rag Mein Daude City, the brand is firmly driven by the passion and the pride that listeners feel for it and associate it to. For further details, log on to www.planetradiocity.com.

    About GREY group India:

    GREY group ranks among the largest global communications companies. Its parent company is WPP (NASDAQ:WPPGY). Under the banner of “GREY Famously Effective Since 1917,” the agency serves a blue-chip client roster of many of the world’s best known companies: Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithKline, Volvo, Britannia, ITC, Ferrero, Saint Gobain, Wipro, BIG, Dell, Adobe, Mondelez, to name a few. GREY was named ADWEEK’s “Global Agency of the Year” and AD AGE’s “Agency of the Year” in 2014. In Asia, Grey Group covers 28 cities in 16 countries, which includes Bengaluru, Gurgaon and Mumbai in India. www.grey.com/india

  • A festival of South Asian documentaries will feature 4 Indian films

    A festival of South Asian documentaries will feature 4 Indian films

    NEW DELHI: A festival of 12 non-fiction films from South Asia covering a wide range of subjects from piracy and copyright issues to India’s agrarian crises, labour migrants and natural disasters will be screened in a four-day ‘Travelling Films South Asia 2010” festival here this week.

    The festival encapsulates a flavour of the subcontinent with films from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Tibet Autonomous Region.

    Organised by India International Centre here in collaboration with Himal Southasian (a magazine published from Nepal) of Kathmandu, the Festival will be held from 29 August to 1 September. All the films are subtitled in English.

    The Festival will open with an introduction by FSA Director NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati. The opening film is Kerosene (Sri Lanka; 16 min; 2011; English & with subtitles) by Kannan Arunasalam on how taxi drivers and newspapermen had to deal with shortage of kerosene following embargoes during the war with Tamil Tigers.

    The festival includes three award winners at Film South Asia Festival 2011, Kathmandu, as well as other films selected to showcase the variety, treatment and intensity that marks the world of South Asian documentaries.

    The winners of the Film South Asia Festival 2011 include Nargis: When Time Stopped Breathing (Myanmar; 90 min; 2010; English subtitles) by Kyaw Kyaw Oo and Muang Myint Aung is about Cyclone Nargis which raged for hours in May 2008 in Myanmar’s Ayeyarwaddy Delta, killing 140,000 people. The filmmakers recorded scenes that touched them such as rain-drenched survivors searching for wood and nails in the mud to build a roof over their heads.

    According to the directors, “Our images reflect our own feelings as much as those of the people we met; we have carefully woven these emotions into an intimate and poetic film.” The film won the Special Jury mention.

    The Truth That Wasn’t There (Sri Lanka/UK; 84 min; 2011; English with subtitles) by Guy Gunaratne won the Second Best Film Award. It is about three student journalists who crossed the frontlines in the wake of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009, becoming the only independent journalists to have done so. They witnessed the trail of destruction and documented everything they saw on 30 hours of tape and over 4000 photographs.

    The Festival will also screen Journey to Yarsa (Nepal; 65 min; 2011; English subtitles) by Dipendra Bhandari which is winner of the Tareque Masud Best Debut Film Award. It is the story of a man in search of yarsagumba, a fungus that grows out of caterpillars in the high Himalaya, and is much prized for its medicinal properties

    The Indian films include Nero’s Guests (56 min; 2009; English) by Deepa Bhatia which won the top award of the Indian Documentary Producers Association. It is a very dark picture of the government’s failure in the face suicides by nearly 200, 000 farmers over the last 10 years and the daunting task undertaken by one journalist, the rural-affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper P Sainath, to awaken the government to this.

    Another Indian film is Dharavi, Slum for Sale (79 min; 2010; English) by Lutz Konermann about arguably the world’s largest slum, Dharavi, in Mumbai, where thousands are facing eviction.

    Cowboys in India (India; 76 min; 2009; English) by Simon Chambers is about the evils perpetrated by the London-based mining company Vedanta Resources in rural India through a story.

    Partners in Crime (India; 94 min; 2011; English) by Paromita Vohra is about video and music piracy and violation of copyright. When more than three fourths of those with an Internet connection download all sorts of material for free, are they living out a brand new cultural freedom, but are they criminals?

    The Pakistani film is The Search for Justice (28 min; 2011) by Tehmina Ahmed and investigates the state of labour laws and courts in Pakistan, exposing flaws in the system and recommending possible solutions.

    Tres Triste Tigres (Three Sad Tigers) from Bangladesh (15 min; 2010) by David Munoz is the story of middlemen exploiting those who seek to travel abroad to escape poverty.

    The Afghan film I Was Worth 50 Sheep (72 min; 2010) by Nima Sarvestani is the story of a girl who had been sold to a man 40 years her senior but escaped.

    The Nepalese film is Saving Dolma (62 min; 2010) by Kesang Tseten which, through the story of a Nepali maid Dolma convicted for murder, provides a rare glimpse into the fractured lives of ill-prepared women migrant workers in the Gulf States.