Communication as a Right: Challenging Power and Amplifying Voices for Justice

RX Radio is an award-winning radio station by and for children, based at the Red Cross Children's Hospital in Cape Town. It serves children with chronic illness and children in general, enabling them to express themselves freely about issues that matter to them. Using a rights-based framework, RX Radio leverages the magic of the microphone to amplify marginalized voices, break down social barriers, and catalyze the relational networks of support-among peers, families, and professionals-that are essential for healing and agency. Through live and pre-recorded programmes, including music, interviews, news, podcasts, and radio diaries, children design their own shows: choosing themes, writing questions, selecting guests, producing their content. Broadcast via Low Power FM, hospital internal television and online streaming, as well as syndication through community radio stations and a dedicated app, RX Radio ensures wide accessibility.


Aligned with the conference theme "The Power of Connection: Reimagining Knowledge, Action and Equity in a Changing SBCC Landscape," RX Radio places inclusion and equity at its core: communication is reframed as a right essential to justice, representation, access, and participation. By navigating bias and misrepresentation through truth and transparency, the project democratizes access to media technology and storytelling platforms. It uses children's own voices-and sometimes digital tools-to convey lived experience, foster intergenerational dialogue, and influence health care practice and policy. In this multimedia presentation, we share the RX Radio model, its outputs, challenges and lessons, and its implications for SBCC practice aimed at equity, inclusion, and the empowerment of children.

In South Africa, powerful food corporations dominate the public narrative about what we eat, shaping consumption patterns through marketing that prioritises profit over health. This imbalance in communication denies citizens equitable access to truth and undermines their right to make informed choices. To reclaim that space, Community Media Trust (CMT), in partnership with HEALA (Healthy Living Alliance) and South Africa's Food Policy Programme, with support from Vital Strategies, developed Chew on This – Food Politics in South Africa, a ground-breaking web series hosted by independent journalist Crystal Orderson. CMT is a not-for-profit communications company specialising in health and human rights-based communication, dedicated to using media as a tool for social justice and behavioural change.
The series exposed the industry-led strategies that drive unhealthy food consumption, particularly the manipulation of children through marketing, and explored the government's responsibility to protect the public through evidence-based food policies. Each episode combined expert analysis, storytelling, and a clear policy-focused call to action, fostering dialogue on food justice and equity.

Through an integrated dissemination strategy spanning digital platforms, radio, and print media, Chew on This reached diverse audiences and generated significant earned media. The series democratised complex policy discussions, enabling citizens to understand how structural forces, rather than personal choice alone, determine food environments and health outcomes.
By reframing communication as a right and storytelling as advocacy, Chew on This demonstrates how inclusive, transparent media can dismantle corporate narratives, amplify marginalised voices, and inspire collective action toward equitable, healthy food systems.

Big Food companies dominate communication spaces in South Africa, investing heavily in persuasive advertising that normalises the consumption of unhealthy products. These campaigns disproportionately target children and low-income communities, undermining people's right to truthful information and perpetuating health inequities. The Big Food Is Not Telling Us the Whole Truth campaign was designed as a countermeasure; a multimedia initiative that reclaimed communication as a tool for justice and equity. By combining storytelling, creative media, and advocacy, the campaign exposed the tactics of the food industry and amplified the voices of those most affected by its harmful practices.
Through 50" and 20" TV and 45" radio advertisements, Big Food Is Not Telling Us the Whole Truth illuminated the strategies of child-targeted advertising and misleading health claims. The campaign emphasised the right of all people to access transparent and accurate communication about the risks of unhealthy diets. By centering youth, caregivers, and civil society leaders in its narratives, it democratised access to media platforms often dominated by profit-driven corporations.
The campaign sparked public debate, strengthened advocacy networks, and provided communities with tools to demand accountability from industry and policymakers. This abstract explores how Big Food Is Not Telling Us the Whole Truth demonstrates the power of inclusive communication to shift narratives, dismantle inequities, and inspire action toward healthier and fairer food systems. It argues that communication must be recognised not as a privilege but as a fundamental right central to equity, justice, and effective SBCC practice.