The Grassroot Radio project is piloting solutions for community information platforms and media pluralism, working to lower the barriers to start and sustain a community radio station, create regional and European-wide networks of stations that can pool community-level resources, co-innovate collaborative media services and increase the impact of those stations through a combination of existing digital and nondigital technologies. With partners in Ireland, Romania and Portugal (Madeira), we are experimenting new technologies based on a strong interaction between mobile telephony, traditional radio and Text to Speech (TTS) technologies, through the RootIo platform.

After the first year of the project, we are currently broadcasting in Bere Islands (Ireland). In Madeira, the Grassroots Radio team has been doing a lot of activities in Curral das Freiras, a civil parish of about 2000 inhabitants in the centre of Madeira and location of one of our grassroots radio stations. The most important outcome so far, is the licensing process in Romania, that through our partners (Activewatch and Medialert), reached to obtain a community radio licence for the first time in the country. Two radio stations will be launched soon in the Danube delta, Radio Civic Vârvoru de Jos (Dolj) and Radio Civic Sfântu Gheorghe (Tulcea).

In this framework, we recently attended the high-level policy workshop The road ahead for digital social innovation: How can the EU support tech as a force for empowerment and social impact?, which took place in Brussels on April 26, 2019. The workshop was organized by the global innovation foundation Nesta, as part of the digital social innovation (DSI4EU) project. The workshop explored how the European institutions can support Digital Social Innovation (DSI) and create a future where technology empowers citizens to tackle our biggest social and environmental challenges.

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In the frame of the EU project ““Empowering civil society through media”, in which AMARC Europe is partner together with Community Media Network (Jordan), Community Media Solutions (UK) and Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI), the Secretary General of AMARC, Francesco Diasio, participated to the conference “Empowering civil society in Jordan through community media”, held in Amman the 18^th and 19^th of February, under the patronage of the Minister of State or Media Affairs.

Over 150 participants from all Jordanian governorates, Palestine, Yemen, United Kingdom and Belgium attended this event. The conference, aimed at studying the relationship between civil society and community media, listened to government officials, civil society activists, practitioners in community media and international experts’ familiar with media laws and best practices regarding the relations between civil society and community media.

Conference participants praised the role of the Jordanian Minister of Media Affairs and the Director General of the Media Commission and called on them to work closely with civil society and community media activists in formulating a new Jordanian media strategy that takes into consideration what is needed so that they can better serve their communities. Several priorities have been highlighted in the final press release, and among others the “ need to bridge the gap between civil society and community media by means of appropriate media legislation that recognizes the importance of community media and creates an enabling environment that can develop and sustain a professional media that serves the public while at the same time dealing with the challenges of the knowledge revolution in concert with international standards.”