Frederick Noronha
Frederick Noronha is a communications activist and independent journalist based in Goa, India.
Excerpts from Noronha’s foreword to the book Grassroots Comics – a Development Communication Tool (Leif Packalen and Sharad Sharma, 2007)
The Power of an Idea
It never ceases to surprise you how powerful an idea can be. As they say, ”a single drop of ink, can make a thousand people think”
When I ran into Sharad Sharma (and later Leif Packalen), it struck me how potent a concept these guys were playing around with. Not just potent. It’s also simple, elegant and easy-to-replicate. What more could one ask for?
We dabble in currently ”fashionable” concepts like ICTs (information and communication technologies) and ICTs-for-development and marvel at how useful an ally the computer can be. Both in giving people a voice, and a chance to communicate.
Yet we overlook the very basics. Low-powered FM radio for instance. The village blackboard. A newspaper shared on the street for everyone to read (despite the limitations of one-way communication here). Or just the humble cartoon – created, photocopied and circulated.
Comics and development? What’s the link, you might just as well ask. But a small band of campaigners and cartoonists are making a connection between these seemingly disparate fields.
More than anything else this is an attempt which can be scaled up. All it requires is an investment in people’s skills. Unlike so many other impressive but ever-so-costly pilot-projects, this doesn’t strike you as just a show-case which is good while small but can’t spread sufficiently to make an impact.
