November 01, 2000 by Staff

Within Reach: Nationals expressed enthusiasm about the feasibility of ministering through the low-cost, low-powered radio stations at Amsterdam 2000.

Amidst a desire to reach the most people with each broadcast, radio ministry has frequently focused on major languages and the mass markets. In being audience-driven, some have argued that many small, sometimes isolated and unreached peoples remain untouched.

Ontario, Canada-based Galcom, International has been instrumental in pursing an alternate approach: low-powered, local radio stations that open a low-cost door to local talent and passiongiving narrow populations an opportunity to hear the good news. Galcom has aided with the installation of 27 such stations since 1993.

Founded in 1982, Galcom's staple has been the production and distribution of fix-tuned and solar-powered radios that give economic access to poor, sometimes isolated people. According to one of Galcom's founders, Allen McGuirl, "We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg with what God is doing in these exciting days of low powered broadcasting and fix-tuned radios."

In conjunction with other radio minstries like HCJB, TWR and FEBC, Galcom is working to reach peoples that other efforts could easily overlook. In one Estonian prison, for example, some 200 prisoners who had access to Galcom radios accepted Christ and began making plans for baptism.

With some 40,000 radios distributed in the Middle East alone, Galcom has also worked in the Philippines, Eastern Europe and Central America.