Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, my friends and I would drive around with the windows down and speakers blasting B96, 103.5 KISS FM, and 107.5 WGCI when my dad would let me borrow the car. I never gave much thought to the people behind the voices I heard on the air, nor to all the people needed to operate a radio station, and I certainly didn’t think radio would ever become a major part of my life, apart from providing the soundtrack to my youthful joyrides. After all, we already had smartphones, bluetooth and music streaming apps. Yet, now, across the world in a small city in the Republic of Georgia, I’ve developed a deep personal connection to radio and an understanding of its vital role in a community through my work as a Peace Corps Volunteer with Radio Marneuli.
Radio Marneuli is a multilingual community radio station and independent media outlet serving Marneuli Municipality, located just south of Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi. Marneuli’s population is roughly 136,000, including the city of Marneuli and 79 surrounding villages. Marneuli is quite different from the rest of Georgia. Here, the majority of the population is ethnically Azerbaijani. There is also a small Armenian population, and of course ethnic Georgians. This ethnic diversity makes Marneuli an incredibly culturally rich place, though it also creates unique challenges.
One challenge is the language barrier. Each group – Georgians, Azerbaijanis, and Armenians – speaks their own language, and these languages use three completely different alphabets and belong to three entirely separate language families. Georgian is the national language, and it’s necessary to speak Georgian to do basic administrative tasks like going to the doctor or getting a driver’s license. The older generation, born and educated before Georgia regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, still uses Russian for communication between ethnic groups. The younger generation studies Georgian in school, but for kids growing up in rural areas or underprivileged families, this is oftentimes not enough to become fully proficient.
So, how can a community function if its members can’t communicate with one another?
This is the challenge that Kamilla Mamedova sought to address when she founded Radio Marneuli in 2006. Herself from Marneuli and from a non Georgian-speaking background, Kamilla began attending journalism training sessions as a teenager and resolved to advocate for her community and inform them in a language they understand. With a grant from the BBC World Service Trust, Radio Marneuli was born.
Radio Marneuli works in Georgian, Azerbaijani, and Armenian. On the air, their approach is one of a kind. One Radio Marneuli journalist begins the show saying “gamarjoba” – “hello” in Georgian – and the second says “salam” – “hello” in Azerbaijani. Each sentence of the news is said first in one language and then in the other. First and foremost, this is done for practical reasons to ensure access to information relevant to the community is available for the whole community. It’s also about Radio Marneuli’s core values: equality and mutual respect. People in Marneuli may not share the same language, but they certainly share the same challenges: roads and transportation, water and gas, access to quality education and economic opportunity, and more. As community radio, Radio Marneuli is the bridge that brings Marneuli residents together based on what they have in common, not what sets them apart.
Radio Marneuli doesn’t just talk about the community’s problems, it brings about solutions. In one case, Radio Marneuli produced a report on the state of educational infrastructure in the village of Chanakchi, where students were forced to attend lessons in old train cars. Chanakchi is an ethnic Armenian village of just a few hundred people tucked away in the hills along the Georgian-Armenian border. It’s more than an hour’s drive from Marneuli over unpaved, pothole-ridden roads. Due to geographic isolation and language barriers, most Marneuli residents were unaware of the situation in Chanakchi. By covering the issue in multiple languages, Radio Marneuli brought it to wider attention. Soon after, the local government announced plans to build a new school.
Children ready to learn in their new school in the village of Chanakchi. Radio Marneuli’s multilingual reporting raised awareness among Marneuli residents about educational infrastructure issues and prompted the local government to act.
In another village, Kizilajlo, residents had no access to water for over a month in temperatures over 100 degrees. When Radio Marneuli arrived to create a report, residents asked to remain anonymous. In these small, tight-knit village communities, many people have family members or neighbors in the local government, and others depend on local government financial support. Drawing attention to problems can be seen as making people look bad, and people may fear retaliation. This illustrates another important role of Radio Marneuli: the bridge between the community and the government. After Radio Marneuli’s report, the local government provided bottled water until running water was restored.
Radio Marneuli makes sure the music also represents the community. The order is a Georgian song, then an Azerbaijani song, then an Armenian or international song, then repeat. Notably, no Russian music plays on the station.
Radio Marneuli’s bilingual approach helps listeners learn each other’s languages and connect with each other’s cultures through music. In this way, it helps address the language barrier and promote mutual appreciation and understanding.
Radio Marneuli’s website is available in Georgian and Azerbaijani and translated to Armenian. Marneuli’s Armenian community is small, but Radio Marneuli is committed to including all community members. Adding a full-time Armenian-language journalist to the Radio Marneuli team is a future goal, but these days it is difficult to dream about the future, as it unclear whether or not Radio Marneuli will survive recent international funding cuts.
I came to Peace Corps Georgia at an interesting moment in the country’s history. I don’t pretend to fully understand the laws and politics of Georgia, and as a Peace Corps volunteer I take no political stance. I can only discuss what I’ve personally experienced working with Radio Marneuli.
Radio Marneuli has been funded by a series of grants from international donors including USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, and Deutsche Welle. These grants provided equipment and training and covered expenses including journalists’ salaries. To comply with the 2024 Law on Grants and Media Broadcasting, Radio Marneuli canceled this funding and has since survived on savings from years of advertising, with its 12-person team continuing their work despite uncertainty about how long salaries can be maintained.
When I arrived I had one job: find alternative funding. I had no idea how.
For months I would sit and think and think and sit. Every so often, I would present an idea to the team only to hear that they had tried it before, it was also illegal under new laws, or other reasons why it wouldn’t work.
Back to the drawing board.
I tried to think about what we had to offer and what people would pay for. I finally landed on storytelling. In hindsight it seems obvious. I listened to my colleagues tell the story of Marneuli every day. But who would pay for our stories? I landed on two projects – webinars and tourism – and ran with them.
First, I cold emailed dozens of universities and organizations proposing a unique educational opportunity for their audiences: learn about Georgia and the Caucasus directly from the journalists producing the headlines. My colleagues were skeptical. I was asking them to stay at the studio into the late hours of the night to accommodate US time zones, and would anyone really pay for this?
I owe a huge thank you to the University of Chicago for being our first paying partner. Seeing that it worked, my colleagues fully committed to my idea, setting up our studio and polishing their English. We’ve had 5 webinars so far, facilitating learning about the Caucasus for more than 70 US students, researchers, and faculty, and we’re looking forward to expanding the project next semester.
Radio Marneuli journalists Tiko Davadze and Vladimer Chkhitunidze staying late in the studio to deliver a webinar to a U.S. university audience. Our guest speaker initiative is ongoing, and we are eager to partner with universities and other organizations to provide on-the-ground perspectives on current events in Georgia, the South Caucasus, and the broader region.
But not all universities could offer compensation, and the math showed Radio Marneuli would never be financially sustainable on webinars alone.
Who else would pay for our stories?
As I was pondering this question, I was also preparing to host my first visitor in Georgia, my college roommate John. I was particularly excited to bring John to Marneuli, as it’s not a common stop for tourists in Georgia. I had the idea to design a day tour for John that we could then use to attract tourists passing through Tbilisi.
We would visit the bazaar, a local artisan’s workshop where he builds “sazes”, an Azerbaijani national instrument, a 12th century monastery, the archaeological site of the world’s oldest evidence of winemaking (8,000 years old!), a puppet theater in the ethnic Armenian village of Shaumiani, and of course Marneuli’s most delicious restaurants for both Georgian and Azerbaijani cuisine.
Again, my colleagues were skeptical. It’s difficult for locals to see the magic of a place that is their “normal”, especially when those locals are journalists constantly working to address the community’s problems. Yet this time I had built up some credibility from the success of my webinar idea, so it was easier to convince my colleagues. Once again, they took my idea and made it even better. We did one tour and then another, and our calendar quickly filled up with friends and colleagues who wanted to experience Marneuli. The region’s diversity and uniqueness was our strength here, as not just international tourists, but also Georgians from Tbilisi and other parts of the country showed strong interest.
My college roommate, John, meets my saz teacher, Ashug Bafali Adgozalov, in his workshop. Bafali has played saz for nearly half a century, and he is the only saz maker in Georgia. He has become a key partner in Radio Marneuli’s tourism initiative, introducing Azerbaijani culture in Georgia to guests through music, poetry, and craftsmanship.
Radio Marneuli Journalist Vladimer Chkhitunidze translates a joke from Georgian to English as local puppet master Armen Hovhannisyan gives a tour of his home theater, a hidden gem bursting with imagination and creativity in the village of Shaumiani.
If this project was successful, it could potentially sustain Radio Marneuli financially, at least temporarily, but to scale it to that point we needed more support. After all, the Radio Marneuli team had an already full schedule of journalistic work. We decided to adopt a community-based tourism model, and we set up an internship program for local youth to become tour guides and develop the skills to eventually design and operate their own tours. What began as an effort to simply survive as a radio station turned into an initiative that brings the community together, celebrates its strengths, and creates opportunity. I’m new to the world of community radio, but I think this is what it’s all about.
The future of Radio Marneuli is still uncertain. Even if our creative funding ideas succeed, we don’t know what the future will hold.
Whatever happens, Radio Marneuli, and radio in general, will have a special place in my heart from here on out. Radio means community; speaking out, listening to one another, and solving our problems and celebrating our successes together.
