(July 13, 2012 - by Jackie Benedict) The HCJB Global Asia Pacific regional office hosted a training event during the second week of June for all five of the radio announcer trainers and some partners in an effort to "train the trainers" in the region.

HCJB Global's Jackie Benedict answers a phone call in the studio ("on-air") for the first time.

Veteran trainers Derek Kickbush, James Totton and Janice Reid led the sessions while new trainers Lisa Balzer and Jackie Benedict, along with three partners from Thailand and Indonesia, had the opportunity to improve their skills.

Spending an entire week going through the "Radio 101" course material gave the team an opportunity to evaluate the training materials from a new perspective and to refresh and sharpen everyone's training skills. The goal is to revise and repackage the content by the end of this year so that it will be more "portable," thus useful to HCJB Global partners in all regions.

Asia Pacific Region leadership wants to provide station managers with resources that will help them succeed after the team completes the training and goes home. These resources will allow station managers to have the materials to train new staff in basic announcer skills on their own.

Input from the Thailand and Indonesian partners was very useful for the revision and repackaging effort. They offered the training team valuable feedback and cultural insights to streamline the training program for the future.

"It's interesting how sensitive you have to be to different nuances in countries which are in the same part of the world," Janice Reid commented. "Indonesians in general are more straight-forward than Thai people, who often respond better to a subtle, gentle approach that suggests rather than instructs."

By teaching partners how to train announcers, the efforts of the Asia/Pacific team are greatly multiplied as partners help to accomplish much more than the five HCJB Global staff members can do on their own. The partners also begin to realize the how much information their announcers must be conscious of while working on radio programs.

Jack, one of the Thai partners, explains, "Because I am a manager for the project, I don't know how [the announcers] are feeling. [This training] made me understand more about their thinking and what they are feeling when they have to learn everything all at once."

Ultimately it is all about the listener. Quality training leads to quality programs and better relationships between announcers and their target audiences. This, in turn, draws more listeners. And when more people listen, more people hear the good news of Jesus.

Source: HCJB Global