Apropos of, well, I'm not quite sure...
Did you know that the BBC is presently working on improving maternal health in Uttar Pradesh, India?
I learned that from a recent tweet from Today editor Jamie Angus, who's just been in Delhi meeting colleagues at BBC Media Action who are working on the project.
Sara Chamberlain, Head of Information Communication Technology for BBC Media Action in India, put it this way late last year:
I’m exhausted, on the verge of illness and we’re very, very tired in the India office – but – we’re EXCITED!
Why? Because in the last month, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in India has delivered maternal and child health content developed by BBC Media Action to more than 260,000 families.
Kilkari, BBC Media Action’s mobile messaging service for pregnant women and mothers, is being piloted on a huge scale in the Hindi-speaking belt as part of a national scale up by the Indian government.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, in close collaboration with BBC Media Action and with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is scaling three of BBC Media Action’s maternal and child health mobile services nationally.
Isn't it astonishing what the BBC gets involved in, unbeknownst to most of its licence fee payers?
(Not that any of this seems to come out of the licence fee. The majority of BBC Media Action's funding comes from the government - i.e. the British tax payer).
And while you're taking that fact on board, here's another from Jamie Angus:
As Jeremy Paxman said, this is how they "spread influence". How many governments is the BBC in bed with?
ReplyDeleteWhy am I paying for this ? Is the BBC a charity ? Except I do not have to give money to charity on pain of imprisonment. I am confused.
ReplyDelete"Sara Chamberlain, Head of Information Communication Technology for BBC Media Action in India"
ReplyDeleteSo many intriguing questions.
If there is a head, that suggests a staff. For ICT, for 'Media Action'... in India.
Just how many other distinct departments are there in how many other countries that really have sweet FA to delivering quality programming to the UK public on the licence fee payers' tab.
It sounds more and more like packing the roster to make them impossible to constrain simply for the redundancy commitment.