a re-print from “The Record”
Guess what? Santa Claus came early this year. Radio Communautaire Missisquoi’s Steinway piano has arrived in time for the holidays. A big thanks goes out to the CARKE foundation for having procured the instrument on behalf of RCM, and M. & Mme. Clement Gaudreau (the piano’s owners) for agreeing to have it become part of RCM’s strategy for supporting the arts in Brome Missisquoi and Shefford counties.
As the piano movers struggled with the CIDI staircase on a frigid Tuesday afternoon, I couldn’t help but reflect on the past few months. When the idea of CIDI acquiring a world-class piano first came up, people looked puzzled and at times smiled in disbelief, saying “Yeah sure”. Why would they say such a thing? I guess it’s considered to be a big deal, something obviously out of reach for “us ordinary people”. Well guess what? Dreams do come true.
The magic ingredient is confidence. Believing in oneself is a powerful thing, the product we at RCM offer to our community. Four years ago, when RCM’s board of directors, myself, Dewey Durrell, David Anderson, Eric Wabant and Jim Ferrier began the process of rebuilding the CIDI project we followed the corporate non-profit building guidelines of Peter Drucker (“Managing the non-profit organization”). Drucker pointed out in his book that the non-profit has to identify what product it sells before it can be successful.
Non-profits, even if they don’t manufacture products such as shoes or furniture for example, still have a product to sell. Drucker explains that non-profits are human-change organizations, and that the product they sell changes human beings. So, what is it that RCM does that changes people?
Durrell pointed out in a meeting I had with him back then, that “if we could recreate the emotion you captured in your song ‘Foster Mountain’ we could possibly find what we are looking for.”
After examining the lyrics we came upon the line “be who you are and not misunderstood”. One thing led to the next and, before we knew it, with the help of the rest of the board we came up with RCM’s mission statement “being who we are”, which in turn lead to the understanding of the product we offer our community: confidence!
Nebulous or not, building self-confidence is exactly what we are all about. CIDI gives ordinary people the chance to be seen and heard through all that we do: TV, radio, internet, and events promotion. We offer the same opportunity that the stars have to local people, and present them publicly in a professional manner. When our communities realize they look and sound as good as any other, then positive change begins to take place.
In the Townships, we often find that communities fight an uphill battle when it comes to believing in themselves because multinational corporations in general control the image we have of ourselves by creating ideals practically impossible for us to achieve, such as becoming Hollywood stars or supermodels, without having to move away from home. What they have to sell is human change devoid of any concern for who we are. It’s more like who they want us to be.
RCM offers an opportunity for its community members to stay in the Townships and pursue their interests in the audio and visual broadcast arts. Linked to the rest of the world, we can now ensure our individuality without being absorbed into a larger picture of who we aren’t, and create a true professional presentation of who we really are.
RCM is wasting time if it does nothing more than emulate commercial radio and TV. It’s about real people sounding good. Being Who We Are. Please give us a listen and lend your support to the project. Together we can go all the way to building our tower and making our grand slam!
We encourage all those who are interested, willing and able, to join our ranks and to help shine a light on our beautiful part of the world. Being who we are is CIDI, lots of great shows, lots of wonderful hosts and terrific volunteers. Give us a listen, send us your comments and suggestions, we always want to hear from you all and play the stuff you want to hear.
p.s.- As much as we’d love to invite you all to our New Year’s Eve Party and meet you, we just don’t have the facilities as yet, the party is for members and hosts only, but we certainly invite you to tune in and join in on our festivities on air, coming to you live from CIDI. Merry Christmas!
Maurice Singfield is an RCM volunteer. Tel: 450-242-9873 / 1-888-539-2098
