page_title: Bill Siemering
section_title: Developing Radio Partners
hierarchical_section_title: Bill Siemering / International Media Development / Developing Radio Partners
caption_attribution_description: English: William H Siemering with producers of the youth program at Nkhotakota Communty Radio in Malawi
context_page_description: William H. "Bill" Siemering is a radio innovator and advocate. He was a member of the founding board of NPR and the author of its original "mission statement," the National Public Radio Purposes. As NPR's first director of programming Siemering helped shaped its flagship program All Things Considered into an influential and enduring fixture of American media. After a decades-long career in public radio, Siemering embarked on a second career of nurturing independent radio in the developing world.
context_section_description: In 2003, William Siemering founded the nonprofit Developing Radio Partners (DRP) with the expressed purpose of using radio to improve the flow of information to those who need it the most and are the hardest to reach. To achieve this, DRP works with local radio stations that have independent voices and explicit development objectives.
  DRP core service provided local stations with a comprehensive and customized training program called Healthy Stations. These trainings, building upon the ideas sustainable community radio, covered topics such as station management, programming, journalistic standards, community engagement and ongoing evaluation. More recently, DRP has provided information in the form of weekly bulletins on topics ranging from conservation farming to energy efficient stoves as well as assessments of the local media landscape for international development organizations interested in capacity building for local media.
  Through DRP, Siemering has worked with independent radio stations in countries ranging from Mongolia to Sierra Leone.  In the latter, DRP partnered with Search for Common Ground and others to help develop independent media in a country devastated by a 10-year civil war. In turn, the Independent Radio Network played a major role in an exceptionally transparent and peaceful national election in 2007.  Recent efforts include projects  on best practices for agriculture in response to climate change in Cameroon, Cape Verde, Rwanda and Zambia,  and on youth and reproductive health in Malawi.
caption: William H Siemering with producers of the youth program at Nkhotakota Community Radio in Malawi
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