UNESCO Office in Windhoek 38-44 Stein Street, Klein Windhoek, P.O. Box 24519, Windhoek, Namibia
Capacity building on use of MXIT App to Monitor Radio Listeners Feedback
December 2013- CI Windhoek Namibia, December 2013- UNESCO CI Windhoek Office, in partnership with MXIT Apps developer carried out a training for , representatives from 10 community radio stations drawn from South Africa, Namibia and Lesotho on use of Mxit application to receive feedback on their radio programming from listeners. This training was carried out within the framework of the SIDA funded project” “Empowering Local Radio with ICTs. The training took place on the 6th December 2013 at Fountains Inn; Cape Town. The Training was carried out by Mr Parri Lückhoff, Head of Apps & Developer at MXIT assisted by Jesse Beth Pearse, MXIT Launch Account Manager.
The objective of the training was to equip participants with skills on how to build and manage their radio weekly monitoring stations Mxit Apps. These applications will have similar content and functionality as a website/mobisite. Included in the app is a section that will contain the UNESCO radio listener’s assessment questionnaire. Listeners will answer the questions on their phones and the manager of the radio station’s app will be able to download the data/answers of those questionnaires in an Excel sheet format.
Jesse Beth Pearse, MXIT Launch Account Manager, assisted participants to successfully register their radio stations at http://launch.mxit.com/#/dashboard.register, where they practiced building and how to manage their own applications.
The highlight of the training was to practise creating Competition and Poll pages which will be used for surveys and getting listener’s feedback. Tshepo Makgopi, programme manager at Jozi Fm could not hide his excitement about the Mxit application. “This application allows dialogue on topics posted on the app, we can even do a survey that reflects on our programming and other programmes happening, I believe that through this app, polls results can easy influence the quality of our programming.” he said
At the end of the training, it was clear that the training introduced a new platform to the radio stations to interact with their listeners. Another participant Katrina Cwi from !Ah Radio station in Namibia added that the Mxit application will allow radio stations to interact with the community because apart from getting feedback from listeners, they will now be able to share their radio updates and stories with the community, and this this an opportunity to encourage communities to get involved in the community radio operations.
