Participatory communication in indigenous health development: A focus group study

The main objective of participatory communication is empowerment of communities to achieve the ultimate goal. The participatory communication mainly focuses on the opinion of involved people. In all the development communication this participatory paradigm is applicable successfully. This report is about the focus group Nepal & Australia. This study found out & examines, compares the perception of two allies of indigenous people. The study was took place at the University of Melbourne by Netra B. Khadka.

In this paper we can see the health development campaign was held in two different please, there are two different groups were participating in this campaign. One is Nepalian villagers and another one is remote Aboriginal community of central Australia. It was two-way dialogical communication. The Australian Government with aboriginal communities a community nutrition program carried out under the governmental health program, utilizing local clinics, was the main basis for the discussions. Both Nepal & Australia the 10-15 young people were participated willingly as volunteer in Nepal the volunteers are male & female, but in Australia there was no female volunteer. They followed the rationale of participatory communication it involves “audiences” (people/communities) in “dialogue, collaboration, and group decision making” (Stuart & Bery, 1996, p. 200), and considers them as the “ultimate and perhaps the most important beneficiary of development communication policies and planning”

Two step participatory communications is the most appropriate and most working one. It was seriously and positively taken by Austrian indigenous. A dialogical two-way communication was used to communicate and advance the program. To avoid the language barriers, the discussion in Nepal was completely done in their mother tongue. English was used for the aboriginals since they knew English.All the discussions were tapped and then translate to English. A computer program, NUDIST was used for data and information analysis.

A project can be 100percent successful when 100percent people were involved in the project. Matter that not even in Nepal the peoples were not fully involved in the nutrition program. This may be happened for the lake of information they provided. In this study the lake information was the main barriers, therefore the project was not fully successful. It was very difficult to involve all the people in the process but it is possible by a good communication.

The study on the Australian was not too much effective I think, because the program was taken by government and the people was used to take medicine from nearest clinic whenever they feel seek. They have not got important information during the service delivery process on serious health problems.