Radio Hope

While the debate over satellite company mergers, Google radio ads, and Internet broadcasting occupies the minds of contemporary radio types, there's something going on in a little corner of the world that is perhaps more relevant than any modern day broadcast controversy.

Radio 4VEH in Haiti offers hope to listeners whose lives are filled with difficulty, desolation, and despair. In an area where the average wage is $360 a year, this radio station uses its AM/FM and short wave bands to change the world one listener at a time.

The historic irony is that, at one time, this "Pearl of the Antilles" was perhaps the richest colony in the world in the days of Christopher Columbus.

Radio 4VEH, “The Evangelistic Voice of Haiti” (La Voix Evangélique d'Haiti) was founded in 1950 by Rev. G.T. Bustin to "bring light into spiritual darkness."

That, they have done.

Today the operation embraces all technology to offer its programming via satellite, webcasting, and a self-created network in partnership with many US stations.

What is most impressive about this magnificent project, operating solely on prayers and financial gifts, is their creative way of serving their extremely poor audience.

In the early 1960's they began distributing fixed-tuned radios, free to thousands of villagers. They even revisited to change the batteries and later converted to a solar powered model. Beginning in 1999 through today they have offered sponsorship of these radios at $30 each. The campaign has been so successful that enough has been raised for new facilities, which now include satellite downlinks.

I invite you to take a few minutes out of your busy day to watch a video that puts the power of broadcasting into perspective. (There is a touching moment when an elderly man wants desperately to say thank you for his new radio.)

Perhaps it will serve as a reminder of what we can do with this magical medium.

The medium of hope.