Vokaribe Radio is an urban community radio, based in marginalized neighborhoods of Barranquilla on the Caribbean coast. In the 1990s a small, interdisciplinary group of students, artists, journalists, and local representatives founded an association to promote local culture in the southwestern part of Barranquilla. After a long process, Vokaribe Radio finally obtained the authorization for a fifty-watt broadcast station in 2012. Since then, Vokaribe Radio has broadcast in more than seventy neighborhoods in the city and connects with other audiences throughout the world through web streaming. The focus of Vokaribe is on local identities, to remain relevant in a conflictive context, and on local culture, to mobilize citizens against violence and discrimination. The local culture and region is central to the work of Vokaribe Radio as a way of strengthening an identity connected to the roots, history, and culture of the Caribbean. Vokaribe’s programming is made up of a musical selection that connects local rhythms with music from other regions of the world, especially the Caribbean and Africa. The radio programs are produced by local social organizations, local artists, people in the community, and independent producers linked to radio. Vokaribe Radio gives space to the voices and stories that are testimony of local processes of social transformation, and to those who are socially marginalized. It promotes citizen participation and the inclusion of issues and realities that are not of interest to the city’s mainstream media.
Programmers: Patricia Rendón Galván, Belén Pardo Herrero, Ivan “Dubfrik” Mercado, Walter Hernández Romero