No menu items!

COSTA RICA'S LEADING ENGLISH LANGUAGE NEWSPAPER

HomeTopicsArts and CultureMonteverde's community radio station aims to inform and entertain town's diverse population

Monteverde’s community radio station aims to inform and entertain town’s diverse population

MONTEVERDE, Puntarenas — Up the dust-covered trail that overlooks a chain of valleys below, a faint echo hums from the modest, wooden shack where the front door gets easily jammed.

Inside those walls is Monteverde’s bilingual, independent, community-run radio station, Radio Comunitaria Monteverde. It’s a young, optimistic project to become the voice for the diverse mountain town popular among tourists and researchers.

“In Monteverde we don’t have a newspaper or a TV channel,” said 24-year-old station coordinator Mari Wadsworth. “The main means of communication is still word of mouth.”

Wadsworth first moved to Monteverde from the U.S. with her family when she was in elementary school. After spending a few years in the scenic cloud forest town, she moved back to the United States, where she graduated from college before being drawn back to Monteverde’s allure.

The founders of the station gave Wadsworth free reign of the internet-only radio channel and told her to make it grow into a well-respected news station. A year after it was founded, the radio’s first broadcast hit the Internet in 2013.

Radio Comunitaria
(Courtesy of Radio Comunitaria Monteverde)

“For the first six months I felt like I was working for a think tank,” she said. “We would kind of just take long walks in the woods and envision what we could do with this. There were so many — and there are still so many — possibilities.”

Barely two years after the first broadcast, the station has 10 volunteers, mostly from area high schools, and broadcasts a variety of shows in Spanish and English, including news features, music and live events. The station also has a youth program, which Wadsworth said has developed into a place where local young people have a consistent platform from which to be heard.

Behind the youth radio project, Wadsworth said local kids are encouraged to think critically and follow their passions through the evolving medium. An hour-long reggae show, called “Green Cloud,” broadcast every Saturday, and a Latin music hour on Wednesdays are two of the more popular shows.

In a place with so many diverse groups, including a notably large Quaker population, Wadsworth said it’s often hard to identify the interests of niche markets and cater to them.

Wadsworth, who was raised in a Quaker family, said Radio Comunitaria is bent on meeting the needs of Monteverde’s 7,000 residents — Quakers, youth and expat communities alike.

Radio Comunitaria

(Courtesy of Radio Comunitaria Monteverde)

As the radio continues to develop, Wadsworth said she and newly hired co-coordinator Max Guarnaccia are looking into applying for nonprofit status and possibly buying a radio tower in order to expand from internet-only broadcasting to local airwaves.

Any future developments on the budding radio project will always center on Monteverde’s diversity in a way that brings the community together, and doesn’t divide, Guarnaccia said.

“We’re trying to dissolve barriers and just let the objective platform of communication thrive,” Guarnaccia said.

Radio Comunitaria Monteverde
Amanda Zúñiga/The Tico Times

The two agreed that good programming and good journalism will always be the station’s primary methods for attracting listeners. They also recognize the unique opportunity to piggyback off the incredible amount of science and research happening in one of Costa Rica’s most biodiverse areas.

“One common string here is the environment, it’s something that everyone can relate to,” Guarnaccia said. “Having a huge part of our journalistic focus in that realm can be relatable for everybody, including the transient culture here and the people who have lived here since the 50s.”

As Guarnaccia and Wadsworth look to position the radio as the go-to source for Monteverde news and information, they say it’s with the town’s unique community in mind.

“We definitely want to try to be the voice for as many of these diverse groups as possible,” Wadsworth said.

After all, the radio’s slogan is: “Muchas voces. Un Monteverde.” “Many voices. One Monteverde.”

You can listen to Radio Comunitario Monteverde at www.monteverde.fm.

Trending Now

President Chaves Downplays Costa Rica’s Security Crisis Amid Record Homicides

President Rodrigo Chaves brushed off concerns about Costa Rica's surging violence during his Wednesday press conference, insisting the security situation "is not as serious"...

Former Costa Rican President Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Faces Trial

Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, who served as Costa Rica’s president from 1998 to 2002, returned to court on today, to face charges in the so-called...

Costa Rica Replaces One-Lane Bridges as Traffic and Population Grow

As the infrastructure of Costa Rica advances, with new four-lane highways and a series of bypasses around San José that avoid the narrow, congested...

Costa Rica’s Crucitas Faces Environmental Disaster from Illegal Gold Mining

Environmental crime in Costa Rica has escalated dramatically, with the illegal gold mining crisis in the Crucitas region now bearing all the hallmarks of...

In Costa Rica, Rare White-Lipped Peccaries Still Survive

Today we meet the white-lipped peccary, a large animal that travels in large groups that has disappeared from a large part of its historical...

FBI Recordings Reveal Costa Rica Ex-Minister Celso Gamboa’s Drug Ties

Costa Rican authorities continue to hold former security minister Celso Gamboa in custody as U.S. officials push for his extradition on drug charges. Recent...
spot_img
Costa Rica Coffee Maker Chorreador
Costa Rica Coffee Maker Chorreador
Costa Rica Travel Insurance
Costa Rica Rocking Chait
Costa Rica Travel

Latest News from Costa Rica