RYAKUGA GRASSROOTS COMMUNICATIONS
The purpose of Ryakuga is to help ordinary people take control of their own communications. Our main focus is dialogue and celebration, rather than the simple dissemination of yet more information.
In 1987 the journalism students of Bay St. George Community College travelled to Prince Edward Island to tell the annual conference of the Atlantic Community Newspaper Association about their innovative program. Described as the "incubator concept", the students worked according to job descriptions and apprenticeships aimed at production in print (10,500 newpapers to high schools in Newfoundland and Labrador), radio and community television. The pedagogy of the program was the practise of popular education methodology within an academic institutional hierarchy.
Dr. Joseph Palacio (left) interviews Sebastian Cayetano at Cultural Retrieval Project 2, Hopkins Village, Belize. The recognition of local culture as an essential ingredient of self-awareness and self-empowerment is a cornerstone of Ryakuga methodology.
The Improvement of Women's Occupation for Rural Development project was a collaboration of Srinakharinwirot University, Thailand, and the Don Snowden Centre for Development Support Communications, Newfoundland. In 1991 Fred Campbell, now of Ryakuga, facilitated participatory video for the project. Here the villagers watch a video -letter made by a group of mat-weavers who want to form a co-operative, partially to avoid being ripped off by middlemen.
The theme of AMARC 5 in Mexico was ALL THE VOICES - which is the basic component of participatory, grassroots communications. But ALL THE VOICES must be perceived not only as a right, but also a responsibility. One of the most notable features of AMARC 5 was the universality and strength of indigenous peoples' ways of doing things.
In 1995 Youth for Social Justice attended the second annual Labrador Innuit Youth Symposium in Nain. The youth videotaped their entire symposium using the Ryakuga POP VDO portable
televison studio.