About Radio Rasant

Since September 2000 there’s a group of students at the Urban Secondary School Sundern, who produce one hour radio programmes. These programmes are relayed afterwards locally on FM and via cable and around the world on shortwave and in the internet as well. To reach this high quality we are supported by several German and foreign broadcasting stations, offices and companies. The topics are chosen from social, technical, literal, cultural, musical and economical affairs and as well as school affairs.

RADIO RASANT - The students’ radio at Städtische Realschule from Sundern 

In May 2000 the Urban Secondary School Sundern celebrated it’s 75th anniversary. 15 young male and female students got together as a group to produce a radio documentation about the celebrations which went on for a week in the school. After the completion of the documentation, our local radio station “Radio Sauerland” immediately relayed this one hour programme on 10th May 2000 on FM. Due to the great success of our first transmission 5 students met in August 2000 to produce regular radio transmissions. They called themselves „Radio Rasant“ as a combination of the first letters from the first names“ of the founders. Radio Sauerland as the local broadcasting service accepted our application to broadcast our programmes on their frequencies. In November 2000 there was the first meeting between the executive of the Radio Sauerland broadcasting service, Peter Neutzler, the executive of the office for public affairs from the regional employer association, Josef Schulte, and the project manager of Radio Rasant, Reinhard Marx. They successfully discussed the opportunity to produce a special programme reporting about topics from school and economic affairs’ relations. This project was named “SCHUWIFUNK”. (taken from School (SCHUle) Economics (WIrtschaft) Wireless (FUNK). Meanwhile there are about 15 different teams from ten different schools who are working in this project. Once a month there is one broadcast of this programme relayed by Radio Sauerland.
Every Thurday there are about 8 volunteer students from the 8th till 10th class, who meet to create and produce a new programme: At this meetings they discuss new topics, searching for information material using internet facilities. They gather information attached to the different aspects which is to be mentioned. Persons who can be interviewed. These persons are visited by the students during their free time in the afternoon to record interviews. Afterwards these interviews are prepared digitally with a special personal computer. Later the music is chosen. Finally the reports, interviews and the music are linked together at an audio studio which belongs to the Katholischen Medienwerkstatt (Catholic Mediaworkshop) Dortmund in Meschede. The work of the students are very pain taking and exact but, at times it does not meet the necessary requirements, when they realise during the production that the topic is not suitable for the present situation, so all the hard work goes in vain. . Additionally methods and educational aspects of the work are basically related to the “rads- project” which are done by the Ministry Of Educational Affairs NRW in cooperation with the “Landesmedienanstalt Rheinland”. You can view these aims at http://www.rads-nrw.de (German only). This work offers special rehearsals to the students due to train key qualifications they will need later on at their employment education or even in their profession. Especially competence in product, communication and social affairs and in intercultural competences will be rehearsed basically , which are usually not trained by the general subjects at school. The students identify themselves with their town, their region and their country. They get an intensive view into the world of different media and combine them effectively. The young reporters get contact to different professions at the media section. They get knowledge in different radio professions. RADIO RASANT - The mouthpiece of social, economical, technical and musical affairs Since the beginning of the radio project we have had the opportunity to structure our work. More and more work are put to a solid basis. We have been able to put our work into two different supporting pillars. First of all we produce radio programmes using the name „Radio Rasant“, These programmes are mainly dedicated to young people. Main topics in this programmes are e.g. reports about actions against foreign hostilities, reports about drugs and the situation in our area, reports about the meaning of cellars to the teenagers. At „SCHUWIFUNK“ the students visit international industrial exhibitions and introduce companies’ new products to the listeners. In April 2001 they went to the Hannovermesse, took some interviews with members of the homelike companies Desch- Antriebstechnik from the city of Arnsberg and TITAL from Bestwig and introduced their new products in the May issue of SCHUWIFUNK with the title:” Local companies at international exhibitions” They also did some interviews in English language with companies from Finland and Hungary to underline that this exhibition is an international one. A lot of interviews were done in English, too. The final production was bilingual, done by some simultaneous translations by the students. In 2002 the members of RADIO RASANT visited the “Hannovermesse” exhibition, the world greatest industrial exhibition, again. They collected interviews for a new programme with the same title. They were also able to collect some interviews for further topics connected to the new currency EURO. They interviewed companies from foreign EU- countries who handle this new currency as well, and questioned them about the problems they had with this new currency. The students inquired persons from companies outside Europe about their opinion about the new currency. These opinion were compared with those from local companies and banks from Sundern. The final programme was relayed on 19th September 2002. We believe this programme documents the growing connection between our city Sundern, our region, our state and all States from Europe. We are happy to announce that RADIO RASANT took part in a county media competition. At SCHUWIFUNK we present different companies and create small profiles. In our broadcast December 2000 we did a programme with LET from Meschede- Heinrichtsthal, Germany. At SCHUWIFUNK we report about new concepts of our employment studies programme at school. All productions were relayed by our local radio station Radio Sauerland RADIO RASANT – The Childrens’ Voice to the world Since summer 2002 RADIO RASANT has produced irregular programmes in cooperation with UNICEF Germany in Cologne. This cooperation was started when we reported about a benefit project at a local restaurant in Sundern. The money the employers earned on that particular day was sent to UNICEF. The members of RADIO RASANT agreed to this idea and produced a sixty minutes local announcement with interviews from UNICEF members and employees of that restaurant to let the people know what’s going on there. This programme was relayed a day after. Since that day we are preparing programmes due to UNICEF topics. RADIO RASANT – The students’ radio worldwide Since March 2002 there’s a new cooperation partner: NEXUS- INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING ASSOCIATION (abbreviated: Nexus- IBA), a NGO (Non- Governmental- Organisation) of the United Nations located in Milano, Italy. They agreed to our application to relay our programmes on shortwave and in the internet. They are the owners of the Italian Radio Relay Station (IRRS) who broadcasts radio programmes with 10 KW transmitter omnidirectional. Our programmes can be heard throughout the entire European area from Iceland to Turkey and from Portugal to Russia and in other foreign countries next to Europe like the African countries of the Mediterranean area and the region of Arabia. A parallel transmission with single side band technology causes better receptions in outstanding areas up to Australia and America. Since the beginning of IRRS and Nexus- IBA’s work it was their primary task to broadcast programmes of the United Nations to this area. This service got great importance during the Iran- Irak- War, Golf-War and during the destruction of the West German - East German border. The application of RADIO RASANT to get our programmes relayed by IRRS was accepted in February 2002, after an executive member of Nexus- IBA had visited our school and the audio studio in Meschede. He took part in an original radio production process. After that we had negotiations about further aspects of our further cooperation. Since April 2002 our programmes are relayed by IRRS, Milano, Italy, as well. Now we are in the eyes and ‘ears’ of the people all over the world with our programmes of social, economical technical and cultural topics.. Of course our programmes will be relayed by Radio Sauerland for the local area. But now we are able to report about facts which are far from our local area – which are far from local interest. Now we are able to get programmes of local affairs relayed to European listeners and abroad. RADIO RASANT – great acceptance to our first transmissions On 12th April 2002 the first programme of RADIO RASANT was relayed to Europe. This programme was relayed eleven times at a fourteen days period of time. Eleven hours reports about Sundern and about the schools in Sundern and their activities against hostility against foreigners. These eleven broadcasts were done at different times and different frequencies throughout the day and night. This caused best reception conditions all over the world due to the fact that different physical conditions in the atmosphere are mainly responsible for reception conditions. By several repetition of the programme on the same weekend at different frequencies and different time during the day and the evenings it was possible to receive the programme in USA, Australia and New Zealand too. The proof was the many mails we received from these countries. The second International broadcasting was an hour’s programme about a project ´Ausbildungsplatz-Marketing-Sundern´. Altogether it was relayed 4 times internationally. The third International broadcast resulted as a special programme for Universal Children’s Day on the 12th and 13th October, 2002.
 Another couple of programmes on international broadcast was done about the EURO. It was a review of the year 2002 and reported about the passing away of the D-Mark and the Pfennig. About the work, efforts and the initial problems with the associating with the Euro and the point of view of the Banks, the retailer and the common citizens. After nearly an year probation Radio Rasant is on air all over Europe at a steady programme time. From May, 2003 one can listen to Radio Rasant on Saturday and Sunday noon and evening. Many international and important topics for the Youth were reported. In addition many other interesting reports such as the Astrid Lindgren Award in Stockholm will be reported in the programmes. The Youth editors introduce their town Sundern to whole Germany and to the international listeners.
Reporting about news from their own school is one of the primar broadcasts they actually produce every year.

Throughout the years we set up a network of students groups which are reporting about a common topic from their home countries to be added to our transmissions. Thanks a lot to the HLW Skypers Group helping to launch this international foreign service.

The next transmission will be done in the near future. Just visit our schedule here.