Argentina’s La Colifata radio station celebrates 30 years committed to solidarity and inclusion

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – La Colifata, the world’s first radio station conducted by patients of a neuropsychiatric institution, celebrates its 30th anniversary this Tuesday (3) in top form, with initiatives that extend beyond the microphones and focus on solidarity and the “economic inclusion” of the most vulnerable.

Over the past 3 decades the radio station founded by psychologist Alfredo Olivera has been actively involved in the recovery of hundreds of psychiatric patients.

Now it has set itself the task of helping the most needy communities in Argentina, a country experiencing a deep economic and social crisis since mid-2018.

“We began with people locked up in psychiatric wards with no social ties, and we are now working with people who have not only recovered but who can also intervene in the problems of others and the world from an ethical perspective,” Olivera explained.

THIRTY YEARS OF RADIO

The station’s origins date back to August 3, 1991, when a group of patients from the Borda Hospital, the largest neuropsychiatric institution in Argentina, gathered around a tape recorder to start a community radio.

After that first broadcast the radio began to receive calls from a multitude of listeners eager to “unveil” what is hidden behind the walls of a psychiatric institution. How were they treated inside the hospital? What did Borda’s patients think of the “outside world?”

“La Colifata was born in that meeting place (…). We created the conditions for there to be a presence that was telling them, in some way, that their way of perceiving the world was worth listening to,” Alfredo Olivera recalls.

As the years went by, the therapeutic effect of collaborating with the radio station became increasingly clear, both during the hospitalization process and after hospital discharge.

In fact, among the patients who remained linked to La Colifata, the annual readmission rate was less than 10% in 2010, a figure in stark contrast to the 40% annual rate for the entire Borda Hospital at the time.

SOLIDARITY DISTRIBUTIONS

Recognized with over 50 awards, La Colifata celebrates its 30th anniversary as just any other Argentine radio station, FM 100.3, in addition to being established as a non-profit organization.

However, its current activities are not limited to the radio studio but go far beyond, touring the neighborhoods through its most recent addition: the Colifata “mobile store.”

Located on the grounds of the Borda Hospital, this two-wheeled vehicle enables food donations to be made by the “colifatos” (lovable madmen) themselves, who are responsible for deciding which institutions or groups they will supply.

Among the people in charge of distributing some packets of cookies is Fernando Aquino, a collaborator of La Colifata for over 20 years, to whom the radio meant “leaving confinement, living again and leaving his illness behind.”

“When we’re on TV, when we’re on the radio, when we visit the provinces with the itinerant La Colifata, we are showing that it is possible to leave a psychiatric hospital, that the disease can be cured,” Aquino said.

Another of his colleagues, Julio César, also known as “Creative Messiah,” defines radio as an “expansion” of existence itself, which allows “breaking down” physical and mental boundaries.

“This donation is given to others, thus shattering the myth of the madman begging,” he says.

ECONOMIC INCLUSION

In addition to this solidarity initiative, the mobile store will serve as a platform for society’s most marginalized groups to sell their products, thus fostering the development of regional economies “at the service of other people’s inclusion.”

According to Alfredo Olivera, this month several workshops will be held for people with psychiatric backgrounds to learn how to identify initiatives in the country from groups “who are poor, but who are also stigmatized, who produce goods and want to sell them.”

The only condition is that products must be developed with “ethical and sustainable values,” the radio station’s director points out.

“The participants of La Colifata will grant them a kind of ‘Colifato stamp’ and they will commit themselves to give visibility to these other collectives and, in turn, through a state subsidy, they will buy part of their production to sell it in Buenos Aires in the itinerant broadcasts,” Olivera says.

“This way they earn money and escape poverty, while helping other collectives to earn money and escape poverty,” the psychologist adds, who sees the future of La Colifata with optimism.