Mission:

Our mission is to live and work among villagers and city dwellers in the Third World to tell their stories, to bring their lives to Western radio audiences.

Sounds deceptively simple. But, of course it isn’t. Hard enough in print. But with microphones? Too intrusive? Too expensive? Too impatient to get the story in the can?

We don’t think so. Yes, we use the very best in microphones and recording equipment. But our method is based on three principles:

· Time: we spend many months living with the people who are the stars of our radio programs. We return time and again, to build earlier friendships.

· Perspective: We do not look at people in the South or the Third World through Western lenses. So the stories don’t get distorted. If you ask Western questions you invariably get Western answers.

· Humanity: above all, respect other people for what they are, and revel in the fact they aren’t like us.

We want farmers, film stars, pavement dwellers, fishermen to live their lives so that you meet them and want the know more about them. It doesn’t matter if they are poor and illiterate. We treat them all as our equals, whose lives we are interested in and should care about.

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IBA was incorporated in Massachusetts in 1980 as a non-profit media company.

Its purpose is to bring better understanding of non-American cultures to American audiences. It specializes in the conception and production of public radio programs and related materials.

Its productions have been broadcast in the United States on NPR, Canada on CBC, Australia on ABC, the BBC (UK) and BBC World Service, India (Radio Midday-Mumbai), Pakistan and Malaysia by their National Broadcasting Systems and South Africa on Voice of the Cape.

IBA is funded by grants from The Rockefeller Foundation, The Carnegie Foundation, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Biden-Pell Education Program of the Agency for International Development, The Ford Foundation, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Massachusetts Cultural Council, The National Science Foundation.

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