Monday, February 11, 2013

UNESCO Chief in Vietnam Katherine Muller Mari answers on World Radio Day

Q: This year’s World Radio Day is themed “Radio – A path to knowledge”. What do you think about Vietnam’s broadcasters helping people access knowledge through education?
A: Your question comes at very good moment because Vietnam is moving forward with developing the learning society and framework has been recently approved for that. There is a steering committee which involves many ministries working together. The goal of the learning society is that everybody has access to learning opportunity everywhere and at all time. It sounds like a difficult thing to do but it is not that difficult. There are many countries that we are using as references who have been able to move forward. We are using references for example Singapore, South Korea, Japan and we are doing to see which of there areas that they have been developing are interesting for Vietnam that we can adopt them and also create their own exercise of Vietnam. But very important role for the process is the media, mechanism for communication.  Because we always think of education as we have to go to school and course. Basically education is carried out at schools. But a lot of education is carried out at home and parents need to learn more in order to educate their children. Education is starting in much earlier age of life right now so that we have early program that parents can be more aware. We are talking about life-learning which means learning from all aspects of your life. So to do this, people need to learn new things. Then we need programs in different sectors that we want them to be aware of. So the best way to educate them is make mechanism for communication. We have been working with the Ministry of Education and Training in supporting the community learning centre and supporting education through museums and pagodas and in different sectors. But the media plays a very important role and ensure that everyone will have access to the information and education.
And for UNESCO, the celebration of the World Radio Day is about that. It is about bringing the world to the Radio. Radio is something that people have for so many generations to have access to information, to hear stories, to hear news to be updated. The Radio is very important nowadays, for example when there is an emergent situation, to guide the population on what to do, to alert the people for example in the storm. So the Radio really plays an important role in many places. It is the only way to access the information that people have and of course the Radio is the one that has the ability to be able to conduct programs for specialized groups. So one of the thing that we are trying to do here today is bring back that feeling that we need to support Radio programs. The Radio is the wonderful tool to bring education and information to people. And you can see the Radio as a very important mechanism for people to voice themselves. Women, youth, and children are able to have programs on the Radio where they have debate, where they can have dialogue, and other different ways of sharing information in a very fun way. There are lots of Radio program for youth. So your question comes at a very important moment. World Radio Day is about making Radio need us and we need the Radio. And that Radio is a really important tool. So that’s what we are trying to promote in relevant to the learning society.

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(Source : Voice of Vietnam)

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