Prometheus Radio Project undertook a three day project in Colombia in partnership with the Social Communications Department of the Universidad del Norte in Baranaquilla, the fourth most populous city in Colombia. The University has a connection with a youth center in Malambo, a smaller town on the periphery of Baranaquilla.

Our workshop ran for two days in the youth center introducing the social and political history and practice of community radio, elementary physical concepts in radio, and building a 4 watt transmitter from a kit. This kit has over 250 parts, and all participants learned how to identify key components, solder, basic troubleshooting for bad parts, and custom fitting a locally obtained sheet metal case with a durable mounting system. It was purchased from www.nrgkitz.com. We used a container similar to a tin for fancy cookies to hold the transmitter- the tin purchased actually a box set for three Rumba CDs obtained at a discount warehouse.

Working with youth in Colombia was a joy, because there is not the youth culture in Colombia that is "to cool" to have anything to do with the world of adults so the youth were very engaged and interested in the workshop and did not seem troubled by looking silly by working hard to make the project work. I also noticed that youth and adults seemed to like more of the same music than we do in the United States. In the United States, tastes are so stratified that even people born in seventies versus people born in the eighties often don't share much in the way of musical taste, but in Colombia it seemed that most everyone had at least some affinity for local music, such as the popular dance music, champeta (though apparently the city council tried to ban dancing to champetas in public because they are too sexy).

On the final day, the workshop was conducted at the Universidad del Norte. We built a 5/8 groundplane antenna. The antenna was built from PVC pipe, aluminum tubing, hose clamps, wire and similar materials. Once completed, the group worked together to tune the antenna using a Standing Wave Ratio Meter.

The workshops were arranged by Laura Suarez and Jair Vega from the Universidad Del Norte. Numerous students from the university helped to translate from English to Spanish. For several hours, I had to fly solo with my broken Spanish- this was exciting for me and no doubt hilarious for the participants. The youth in Malambo eagerly expressed their gratitude for the transmitter by teaching me dozens of Colombian curses, which I repeated often to everyone's amusement. I stayed with the generous family of Ilse Montoya, a communications student who took many days with me while I was there to make the project a success. The students and professors all pitched in to take me around to buy tin boxes, random pieces of equipment, and teach me the names and mating habits of all of the animals at the zoo.

Prometheus hopes to arrange many workshops like this supporting progressive movements and open communications in developing nations. At the international community radio conference in Nepal, we were invited to literally dozens of countries to conduct similar workshops.