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Greetings from the Centre for Independent Journalism, Malaysia (CIJ)! My name is Thanam Subramaniam and I am the coordinator of an exciting program that conducts radio production trainings with several communities of women living in Klang, Selayang, Rawang and Sarawak.

As mentioned above, we are writing in to make a request sponsorship or donation from you and your esteemed organization to support our efforts in aiding young women and youths to engage in radio projects and raise awareness on community media through a Community Radio Fest (radio production competition II).

The Centre for Independent Journalism, as it was established in 2001, was aimed at expanding space for independent media. This was done by the introduction of a project called RadiQRadio, which used the online tool and a collaboration with a well-established Indonesian radio network for broadcasting into some regions of Malaysia.

Since 2004, CIJ begun active involvement in issues of media freedom and freedom of expression and started training for CSOs and community groups to raise public awareness on these issues as well as among policy makers.

In order to achieve one of CIJ”S objectives –‘ facilitating marginalized voices’, CIJ organized the first Radio Production Competition last year, with good responses from the communities. Nine groups participated in that competition and the finale and prize giving ceremony was held during the inaugural feminists’ gathering, Fiesta Feminista in University Malaya.

Following this, CIJ will be organizing the second radio production competition, to be called Community Audio Fest where members of a community will be encouraged to produce their own audio programmes for the competition.

The objectives of this competition are :

To invite more women and youths in community to learn about audio programme and production
To raise awareness on practices of freedom of expression through communication skills

Apart from training, this Radio competition encourages women and youths to make their own radio shows and we will bring a collection of their efforts to showcase at an Community Radio’s Fest on July, 2008 in Sungai Judah, Pulau Carey to share their programmes. Hence, the objective of this letter.

Through the competition, we hope to reward participants with sets of recording equipment that they can use in their community independently.

CIJ believes, through collaboration and commitment with such a renowned entity such as yours, not only will our objectives be met but your need to integrate with local communities will also be achieved through our ongoing and long-term radio projects.

Attached are details regarding the abovementioned competition, CIJ.

About the competition
The competition is open to women from community groups and young people who are interested to document women’s rights in an audio format. The competition will run from January until the end of June 2008, during which groups must also attend radio production training under CIJ. This is to enable the groups to familiarize themselves with the equipment and the programming formats.

Our Request
We would like to offer sets of recording equipment as 1st prizes for both categories. Equipment set that includes a digital recorder, a headphone set and the relevant cables. So, we request sponsorship from your esteemed organization to support our efforts in facilitating marginalized voices’ through communication skills.

Our Budget

We will take on the main costs of organising the competition that includes travel and meetings costs with the communities prior to the competition. However, we would like to seek for donations or contributions to help us obtain the prizes and other related costs to organising the fest. We will also be seeking support for a coordinator who will be working for the duration of 6 months to coordinate the competition.

Item
Estimated Budget (RM)
Competition coordinator
1000
Prizes ( Equipments)
2000
Transport
600
Adverstisment / Invitation
300
Materials ( Certs & Photocopies)
300
Venue
300
Refreshments
500
TOTAL
5,000

We will follow up by contacting your good self to request a meeting to talk about the possibilities of support from you. Let’s say that your generous help would enable the women in community and young people to explore and exhibit their talents.

Feel free to call me at 03 4024 9840 or 03 4023 0772 or 013 220 3091. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for considering this request.

Yours sincerely,

…………………………….
THANAM D/O SUBRAMANIAM
Project Coordinator,
Centre for Independent Journalism
thanam@cijmalaysia.org