In the year 1984, a group of young medical students of Mysore Medical College started the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM). Their initial intention was to provide rational, ethical and cost-effective medical care to the needy. They started small – collecting physician samples of medicines and distributing it to the poor patients, organizing blood donation camps and weekly rural outreach clinics around Mysuru. In 1987, destiny took them to HD Kote, the home of the displaced and dispossessed forest-based tribal population belonging to five different tribes – Jenu Kuruba, Kadu Kuruba, Yerava, Paniya and Bunde Soliga – had been displaced twice from their natural habitat due to development projects of the Government, viz ‘Project Tiger’ and ‘Kabini Dam’, and were forced to live in penury on the fringes of the Bandipur National Park.
The medicos set up a clinic at a tribal hamlet named Brahmagiri, at a distance of about 80 km from Mysuru city, with a little help from the District Administration. Realizing early that medicare by itself is not enough and hoping education to be a panacea to the the problems faced by them, they opened an informal school for the tribal kids in a cow-shed in Brahmagiri. Socio economic empowerment activities were added to health and education, and the rural poor were also brought under the ambit - as the organization moved from the role of a ‘provider’ to a ‘facilitator’. A 10-bed hospital was started at Kenchanahalli, along with a host of community-based programs in Health and Education. As the medicos returned in batches after completing their post graduation, the multi-specialty Vivekananda Memorial Hospital took shape at Saragur. The organization continued to grow and expand in the 90s. Today, the institution-based services under health scheme are provided through the Vivekananda Memorial Hospitals at Saragur with a 90-bed facility offering multi-specialty secondary care at an affordable cost to the rural and tribal populace. In Kenchanahalli they have 10-bed facility offering primary care, along with options for Ayurvedic treatement. SVYM hospitals are recognized training centers for capacity building of entire gamut of health professionals – from specialists to grass root workers.
Community-based services are provided in the key focus areas, through the outreach program and a network of grass root level health workers called health facilitators. Their HIV control program, that offers comprehensive, inclusive and end-to-end care, is rated as one of the best in the country and has been hailed as a best-practice model by UNAIDS. For details of SVYM activities and accomplishments, visit http://www.svym.org/
For institution of such organized and dedicated social work, communication with the community is not only desirable, but becomes essential considering the difficult terrain of their operational areas. The policy of Community radio of Government of India came handy to them and they established their CR station "Janadhwani" at Saragur in the year Feb 2012 with CSR support from BECIL - a Govt undertaking of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Over a period of last six years, they have gradually expanded their broadcasting services involving the local community and today they broadcast daily from06:30 Hrs to 20:00 Hrs, thanks to the dedicated team of volunteers and 7 staff members of the station. The performance of their CRS has been duly recognized by the Government with various awards for innovative content production all involving the community. Even though the performance of the majority of CRS functioning in our country in meeting the objective set by Government is honestly dismal, the performance of CRS run by SVYM is a silver lining and encouraging. A truly model CR station to the core to be emulated by other aspiring as well as operating CR stations. They have demonstrated how communication through the medium of Radio can supplement the community work. This also goes to prove that, the CR can be successful only if the operator has background of selfless and organized community work with contact with the grass root level which is unfortunately lacking in many operating CR stations.
Recently SVYM, augmented their CR which is a basically a 50 W FM Radio transmitter with Internet radio for global coverage with CSR support from ATC Labs http://www.atc-labs.com/ The App for listening to their Radio station can be downloaded from Google App Store by searching for "Janadhwani Radio"
Contributed by :- Shri. R.Narasimha Swamy,narasimhaswamy@yahoo.com