The three winners of the IAMCR-FAO Rural Communication Services Research Award will present their papers at a special panel at the upcoming IAMCR’s 2023 conference to be held in Lyon, France, from 9 to 13 July (Lyon23), with an Online Conference Papers (OCP23) component from 26 June to 5 July.

The Special Session devoted to the awardees’ presentation will be livestreamed on 12 July 2023 3:45-5:30 PM CEST (9:45-11:30 PM SST) by CCComdev via Zoom and Facebook. To participate in the Zoom, please register at https://bit.ly/RCSAward. Like us on Facebook to watch the livestream.

Here are the bionotes of the winners and quotes from their papers:

Ma.  Theresa M. Rivera- University Research Fellow, Communication, Far Eastern University, Philippines

“The combination of community radio  and its shift to digital technology plays a transformative role in promoting inclusive and meaningful citizen participation, fostering cultural harmony, and upholding community-driven development processes toward peacebuilding.”

“Dr. Rivera is a communication for development (C4D) educator,researcher and practitioner. She is also in training, design and development of communication programs and communication research, more recently on Social and Behavior Change (SBC). She has served as consultant to U.N. and Philippine local government projects, and to corporate and private organizations for the development of professional training programs and in coaching and development of communication, research and participation strategies across a wide range of development issues, from agriculture / environment, health and sanitation to disaster management, in the Philippines and in other parts of Southeast Asia.

Nurul Hilmiati- Researcher, Research Center for Community Welfare, Village and Connectivity at the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) – Indonesia

“Enabling rural families’ participation in innovation and rural development through Redi KAMODI as a co-innovation platform is crucial for farmers’ empowerment and sustainable practice change.”

Dr. Hilmiati is a veterinarian and a participatory development communication practitioner. She has experience in conducting participatory research and development initiatives and providing training for field assistants, extension workers and farmers. She has a strong background and experience in designing and developing communication strategies to scale out the innovation uptake and institutional development for community development. Her recent projects funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) involved improving cattle production and smallholder livelihoods in crop-based farming systems in Indonesia and smallholder cattle enterprise development in Timor Leste.

Nurdahalia Lairing – Researcher and Teacher, Research Center for Communication, Social Ecological Learning and Sustainable Environment (CoSeLSe) at the University of Muhammadiyah Enrekang (UNIMEN), Indonesia

“The prototype testing of the digital farmer field school (DFFS) is part of adhering to the DFFS Ethical Standards agreed by its design team that is articulated as  ‘we do not want to disappoint farmers’.”

Ms. Lairing coordinates the design and development of the Digital Farmer Field School with Living Lab approach in Indonesia. Her recent project is about Prototype Testing of Digital Farmer Field School (DFFS).  DFFS is an android-based learning platform installed on a tablet used by farmer groups and extension agents for knowledge sharing and co-creation. It is an alternative to rural extension services aimed to improve access of farmers to information on agriculture, health and environment. The first version of DFFS (DFFS v1.0) has been developed by the local design team and it has been tested with farmer groups in Enrekang district.

 

Note: This article is originally published in CCComDev website.