"Acción Cultural Popular fue una institución católica de largo alcance que ofreció educación a la población campesina y que buscó mejorar sus condiciones de vida en una época violenta, con alta migración rural-urbana y una creciente urbanización y pobreza. Las investigaciones sobre esta ex
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periencia han crecido en los últimos años y es conveniente presentar un balance historiográfico que identifique y analice los principales aportes, conclusiones, limitaciones, vacíos y tendencias de investigación. Este artículo analiza la producción científica sobre Acción Cultural Popular entre 1975 y 2021 para propiciar nuevas investigaciones que contribuyan a la comprensión de esta obra social católica. Se compiló la bibliografía a partir de los repositorios universitarios, así como de las principales bases de datos científicas y revistas académicas. Se incluyeron todas las disciplinas de las ciencias sociales y humanas, a su vez los textos se sistematizaron y analizaron de acuerdo con la temática tratada y prestando atención a la discusión investigativa desarrollada. La revisión nos permitió identificar que la discusión en torno al sistema educativo y el impacto social en las comunidades campesinas valora los aportes de la organización, mientras que la discusión acerca de los discursos desarrollistas y la influencia de la Iglesia católica presentan evaluaciones más desfavorables." (Resumen)
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"This is the annual report for the Interactive Radio for Ecologically Sustainable Agricultural Practises (IRESAP) among small scale farmers in Northern and Central Tanzania. The reporting period was from January 2021 to December 2022." (commbox)
"Shifting attention from the United Nations’ focus on perpetrators of climate change to climate change victims, this qualitative content analysis uses a constructivist paradigmatic approach to examine the participatory video narratives produced by local media producers in rural India. Based on the
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levels of analyses for the impact, findings from twenty primary issue videos are thematically presented: individual, family and community, and spatial. The videos depict an intertwined nature of agriculture and environment, and documents agentative social action, transformative collective potential, and present a starting point to catalyse an iterative process of communication that expands our understanding of climate change impact beyond what is portrayed in globally dominant narratives." (Abstract)
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"This Smart Village Blueprint, piloted in Niger, has been conceived as a practical tool for establishing smart villages. It contributes to the implementation of the Niger 2.0 Smart Villages project, which aims at providing broadband infrastructure to improve Internet access in rural and remote parts
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of the country. The Smart Villages project comprises a locally led, integrated, and holistic approach to providing access to digital services to all citizens of rural communities, with the integration of digital technologies serving as a crucial enabler of equitable, qualitative and efficient delivery of SDG-related services for all. This Blueprint is based on the lessons learnt from experiences setting up, managing, and sustaining similar projects in different parts of the world, including the Niger Smart Villages project. These lessons highlight the importance of dynamic local leadership, the continuous development of local capacity to manage and lead sustainable development programmes, and the need to work collaboratively with multiple stakeholders and adopt a whole-of-government approach, moving away from older, territorial, siloed development models. The aim of this Blueprint is to make smart villages one of the mechanisms through which multiple SDGs can be achieved simultaneously in remote and underserved areas." (Foreword)
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"In 1947 Father José Joaquín Salcedo laid the cornerstone of what would become, until its demise nearly a half century later, Latin America’s largest, Catholic, mass media-based education and community development network, the Radiophonic Schools of Radio Sutatenza and Acción Cultural Popular (
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ACPO). Begun as an experiment in rural catechetical outreach using a homemade radio transmitter, three borrowed receivers, and an old film projector, the radiophonic school system expanded to encompass five radio stations, state-of-the-art printing and recording facilities, a national circulation newspaper aimed exclusively at rural readers, and Latin America’s first leadership training institutes for peasants." (Page 114)
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"Was hilft gegen die Landflucht? Digitale Strategien können ländliche Räume vitalisieren. Die Autorin begibt sich auf einen Landspaziergang durch zukünftige digitale Welten: Glasfaser, Offene Daten und Sensoren im Internet der Dinge tauchen ebenso auf wie smarte Mobilität, Roboter in der Gesund
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heitsvorsorge und smarte Bürger. Die ländlichen Orte stehen vor der Entscheidung, sich auf den digitalen Weg zu machen, ohne dabei ihre Traditionen und Eigenheiten aufzugeben. Das Buch ist eine Einladung, den eigenen Platz in der digitalen Welt zu finden im Sinne von Eigenheit, Freiheit und Gemeinwohlorientierung. Denn ohne digitales Land ist auch kein Staat zu machen." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Makutano Junction is an ‘edutainment’ soap opera made for local TV stations in Kenya and other East African countries. The show is about a fictional peri-urban village and the people who live in it. The program is made in Kenya, but was devised and is produced by Mediae, a UK based company that
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works with the support and collaboration of some major Kenyan and international NGOs. Mediae was founded by the producers David Campbell and Kate Lloyd Morgan. Since it began broadcasting in 2007 Makutano Junction has become one of the most popular shows on Kenyan TV; currently around 8 million viewers watch it every week, which is about 20% of the country’s entire population. Mediae have created a small stable of TV and radio shows mostly for Kenya, but also for Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda. They all give rural Africans access to the latest information and discussions about issues that concern them. The themes and plotlines for these shows are informed by extensive and careful research in the field, conducted by themselves or partner organisations.
Some of Mediae’s work is highly innovative. An example of this is the show Shamba Shape Up, which is also a major hit in Kenya and neighbouring countries. Shamba means ‘farm’ in Swahili, and as the title suggests it’s a kind of small farm makeover show. So presenters and experts visit smallholding farmers, and on camera, discuss problems that they might be having, with animal health, crop yield, market strategies etc, and consider solutions and strategies. Then they put a plan into action, and have a follow up show to see the results. Some 10 million viewers across East Africa view this show every week, even more than Makutano Junction. A very important aspect of this show is its associated app; I-Shamba, with which farmers are able to use mobile phones to access a database of up to the minute information and advice. Once remote smallholding farmers are increasingly connecting, interacting and educating themselves through this special show and app." (Page 99-100)
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"This publication is the first scoping study aimed at compiling existing evaluation cases in the field of Communication for Development as applied to agricultural and rural development initiatives. It draws on a literature review and 19 cases across Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribb
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ean comparing evidence of evaluative approaches, methods and outcomes of communication programmes and rural communication services. It also provides clear indications about the need to build evidence that inform policy to advance inclusive rural communication services." (Back cover)
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"This chapter examines the history and development of Popular Cultural Action (Acción Cultural Popular, or ACPO), the multipronged project of Christian revitalization, local empowerment, and communitybased development whose radio education network, Radio Sutatenza, founded by a Colombian parish pri
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est in 1947 to address rural adult illiteracy, became Latin America’s first Catholic radio network and the model for media-based rural education and community development programs in twenty-four countries throughout Latin America, Asia, and Africa. In nearly a half century of existence, ACPO published and distributed more than six million cartillas (illustrated instructional manuals) for its five-point “Fundamental Integral Education” (EFI) program, which included Alphabet, Numbers, Health, Economy and Work, and Practical Spirituality; distributed seventy-six million copies of the newspaper El Campesino; received and answered 1.2 million letters from rural listeners and readers; graduated twenty-three thousand Colombian and foreign radio auxiliaries and community leaders from its training institutes; logged 1.4 million hours of educational broadcasting; and pressed 690,000 records. By 1990, when ACPO was forced to shutter its press and record-cutting studios and sell off its 245 radio network and buildings, it had a presence in hundreds of rural parishes stretched across the length and breadth of Colombia, and its broadcasts and educational materials were frequently acknowledged as inspiration for many a professional of rural origin. ACPO was but one among many other Colombian projects inspired by Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum (1891) and spearheaded by both laypeople and clergy that emerged in the period before Vatican II to redress longstanding social, economic, and cultural inequalities made more acute in the first half of the twentieth century by the specter of totalitarianism, economic crisis, rural migration, urbanization, and incipient industrialization. This chapter traces the history of ACPO between 1947 and 1962. It grew from modest origins, conducting adult rural literacy work and basic community-centered development in three small, Central Andean settlements supported by local in-kind contributions and a small diocesan subsidy. Gradually, it would expand into a multimedia-based educational juggernaut with transnational influence, partners, and funding lauded by Pope Pius XII in a 1953 Vatican Radio broadcast heard throughout Latin America. By the late 1950s, ACPO was held as the model for Catholic-directed, radio-based rural education and community development. ACPO’s success and eventual influence beyond Colombia’s borders was partly the result of Catholic transnational activism occurring in the decades before Vatican II. Efforts to redress the excesses of unrestrained capitalism and to build a community based in papal encyclicals such as Rerum novarum or Quadragesimo anno, even when they stopped short of advocating the kind of structural, grassroots Christian base community approach embraced by Liberation theology, I suggest, laid the foundations for participatory and transformative forms of social action that emerged after Vatican II." (Pages 245-246)
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"This sourcebook is meant to equip development and communication professionals with a useful set of guidelines, reference materials and learning resources to apply communication in rural development initiatives. The main goal is to enable readers to design and implement rural communication strategie
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s combining participatory methods with communication processes, media and tools best suited for a specific situation. In particular, the sourcebook aims to develop the following capacities in ComDev: Identifying the phases and steps in communication planning for development; Conducting situational analysis and participatory communication appraisal in the field; Developing a workable communication strategy and plan of action; Facilitating multistakeholder dialogue and collaboration to successfully implement ComDev activities; Designing, pre-testing, producing and using multimedia ComDev materials; Assessing the results of ComDev initiatives and promoting long-term sustainability; Understanding ComDev as it applies to agriculture and rural development issues." (Page 2)
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"La presente publicación tiene como principal intención revisar la riqueza analítica y propositiva de la comunicación en el campo del desarrollo, en el actual contexto de “redimensionamiento” de la cultura y su relación con el cambio social; entendiendo que esta diversidad de puntos de part
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ida reconfiguran los escenarios y competencias del quehacer de los comunicadores en la sociedad actual. Este libro nace de una preocupación pedagógica de los autores quienes construimos cada uno de los artículos que lo integran a propósito de nuestra labor docente en el marco del Seminario “Usos Socio-políticos de la Cultura en el Desarrollo”, que dictamos entre 2010 y 2012 en la Facultad de Periodismo y Comunicación de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (FPyCS – UNLP) y en la Licenciatura en Comunicación Social de la Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)." (Presentación, página 6)
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"This essay examines the Responsible Procreation campaign of Acción Cultural Popular (ACPO) within the context of “zones of crisis” characterized not only by the legacy of long-standing violence but by tensions experienced within the Catholic Church and Colombian society at large during the tum
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ultuous decades of the 1960s and 1970s. ACPO centered its Responsible Procreation campaign on a radical critique of authoritarian and exclusionary gender relations that could only be remedied by guaranteeing women’s access to education and their participation as equals in household and community decision making. As a Catholic-affi liated organization, ACPO enjoyed legitimacy many secular organizations did not, enabling it to provide spaces where rural Colombians, especially women, could experiment with voice and agency and explore alternative visions of citizenship and community development without fear of reprisal or social ostracism. Christian social activism, the essay concludes, often laid the basis for the proliferation today of social movements spearheaded by rural women." (Abstract)
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"Communication for Development (ComDev) is a participatory approach that integrates community media, low-cost ICTs, mobile phones and other communication tools to facilitate access to information, knowledge sharing and social dialogue. Well-planned and managed ComDev activities are crucial to ensure
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stakeholder engagement, and should be considered in project design, in order to enhance impact and ownership of rural development initiatives. The guidelines provide development planners with practical orientation on how to plan and monitor ComDev activities as part of the project cycle, so that overall effectiveness and sustainability may be improved." (Back cover)
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"This volume juxtaposes the global discourse on ICT-D and telecentres with in-depth empirical case studies on the pattern of access and use of telecenters in rural India to draw implications for policy and practice. It suggest that access and use of telecentres and their services are mediated by the
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multiple contexts in which they are embedded. While they provide opportunities for people to interact with new technologies, their impact has been mainly in terms of convenience provided by some of the services vis-a-vis existing alternate channels. Particular telecentre models have brought about some change, but this is only when there was a match between the services provided and the local demand for particular information and services. The delivery structure services in terms of user fee, need for reading and computing skills, and linkages with existing institutional context have further shaped access and use. The efficacy of telecentres in generating new jobs in rural areas, increasing efficiency and reach of e-Governance and other basic services, enhancing livelihoods and the well-being of the people, and overcoming the rural-urban divide has been limited." (Publisher description)
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