"Communications is a serious business".
Indian graphic designer and artist, Ms Lakshmi Murthy, should know. Together with Bougainville community broadcaster, Mr Aloysius Laukai, she was presented with The University of Queensland’s top social change awards at a recent function at the St Lucia campus.
UQ Vice Chancellor Professor Paul Greenfield presented Mr Laukai and Bougainville-based community radio station New Dawn FM 95.3. with the School of Journalism and Communication's 2009 Communication and Social Change Award for its pioneering work in helping rebuild Bougainville after a devastating 10-year internal conflict that killed 20,000 people, and displaced 40,000 others.
Professor Greenfield presented the Meritorious Commendation for Communication and Social Change Award to Ms Lakshmi Murthy for her tireless efforts over two decades bringing literacy to India’s disadvantaged through illustrations and innovative training materials.
The Vice Chancellor congratulated the winners on the quality of their ground-breaking work in using communications to bring about significant social change.
He said the recent earthquakes and tsunamis that had hit the Asia-Pacific region, especially Indonesia and American Samoa and Tonga highlighted the importance of effective communications.
“In the immediate aftermath of the first recent devastating tsunamis and before Australia and major agencies could fly crews into affected areas, many Australian reporters relied on interviews with local journalists and editors and vision from grassroots people.
One theme of the disaster analysis was whether better communication could have averted some deaths and injuries.
"Down the track, we can expect local media to be key advocates for reforms aimed at limiting the impact of future natural disasters on these communities,” Professor Greenfield said.
The Head of UQ’s School of Journalism and Communication, Professor Michael Bromley, said it was significant that a South Pacific media organisation had won for the first time since the Award began.
“New Dawn FM’s mission is to restore freedom of expression and promote the reconciliation process on Bougainville, by giving a voice to local communities that have been dispossessed by civil war.
“Our independent 2009 Award Jury Panel, which included senior representatives of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Government’s overseas development agency, AusAID, unanimously agreed that New Dawn FM 95.3 Community Radio’s brave and pioneering work is in the best tradition of international grass-roots activism to promote communication for social change”, Professor Bromley said.
At the awards function, Professor Greenfield announced that the 2010 prizes would be expanded.
“There will be two prizes of equal value, $2,500 plus a plaque; one for an individual and the other for an organisation, removing the inherent difficulty of comparing the success of a lone ranger with that of a team,” he said.
As well as Papua New Guinea and India, award nominees came from organisations or individuals based in Bangladesh, Burundi, Canada, the Congo, New Zealand, Nigeria, the Philippines, Fiji, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Uganda and the USA.
