The Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) announced that it has secured further grant funding to help support vulnerable communities to stay safe during the COVID 19 period. The group was awarded the $20,000 grant under the Empowering and Supporting Local Communities Grant Program and was awarded by the Minister for Multiculturalism, the Hon Natalie Ward MLC for community led initiatives.

Jon Bisset, CBAA CEO, said, ‘The CBAA will use the grant funding to co-design and produce a series of 30 Community Service Announcements (CSAs), intended to be translated into various languages in affected and disadvantaged communities. These announcements will be used across radio stations in the affected LGAs and will encourage the accessibility of individual testing and promote the positive impact individual testing has on the community. By co-designing the CSAs with stations and using voices that reflect and are trusted in the community, this will decrease the perceived barriers relating to testing and vaccination.

“With over 3.5 million listeners a week including those in remote areas where community radio is their only service or where English is not the community’s spoken language, we are best placed to continue to share Government health messages. Community radio has already played a huge part in keeping some of our most at risk communities informed of Government health announcements. Delivering these important messages empowers and supports local communities, which is what community radio is all about.”

The CBAA remains in a unique position to distribute key and responsible health messages across its reach of diverse and marginal members of the community radio network. Of the 3.6 million listenership, 1.15 are culturally and linguistically diverse and 123,000 are Indigenous.

The Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) champions community broadcasting by building stations’ capability and by creating a healthy environment for the sector to thrive.

The CBAA is a not for profit cultural organisation established for the promotion of community broadcasting including both radio and television.