Bill Siemering spent 32 years in public radio, helping to develop “All Things Considered” and “Fresh Air with Terry Gross,” among other programs. Now he’s applying that experience to help bring community radio to emerging democracies around the world.

“This may be the most important work of my career,” he declares. “I couldn’t imagine not using all this experience in a new way.”

Siemering, of Wyndmoor, Penn., believes in the power of radio. “It is a powerful, personal, imaginative medium that is easily learned and can change lives,” he explains. “Radio gives a voice to people. Poverty is about having no voice, so by giving voice to people they can air and solve their problems, hold public officials accountable and celebrate their culture.”

He learned to trust that voice in first grade, while attending a two-room country school near Madison, Wisc., and learning about science, social studies, music and art over the WHA, the University of Wisconsin radio station.

Later, as a student at the university, he worked at the same station he had listened to as a boy. He went on to become the manager of WBFO in Buffalo, N.Y., during the 1970s and developed a storefront broadcast center in the heart of the black community.

While he was there, he wrote the original mission and goals for National Public Radio (NPR) as a founding member of the NPR board of directors. He helped create one of public radio’s most successful programs, “All Things Considered.” Later, while managing WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, he helped expand “Fresh Air with Terry Gross” from a local to a national program.

At 59, a new chapter in Siemering’s life opened when he was awarded a five-year MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Although he had seldom been overseas, he began working with the Open Society Institute in bringing independent media to new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and Africa, especially South Africa and Mongolia.

He served as a Knight International Journalism Fellow in 1995 and as president of the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C., from 1996 to 1997.

In 2004, at age 70, he founded a nonprofit called Developing Radio Partners (DRP) to encourage the development of community radio in rural areas around the world. DRP emphasizes building local partnerships and income streams that make local radio stations successful.

Siemering has found that residents in rural communities “have a very strong sense of ownership of their station,” in part because it is the primary source of news and information for the majority of people in developing countries. “There are few other social investments that can have broader reach or affect more people’s lives than an effective radio station,” he says.

For example, he cites radio’s role in exposing petty corruption in Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in the world, and generating interest in an election in 2007 that had 75.8 percent voter participation. He also credits radio with increasing the number of girls going to school in Sierra Leone from 40 percent to 60 percent.

In Mozambique, according to Siemering, men are eight times more likely to get tested for HIV as a result of listening to programs on Radio Dondo. And in Burundi, he said formerly warring factions – the Tutsis and Hutus – are now working side by side at a local radio station that has been a catalyst in the formation of 400 women’s clubs in the country devoted to community improvement projects.

He is continuing to innovate, seeking to help community radio stations in developing countries broadcast news about the latest discoveries in environmental protection, agriculture and health through his proposed Ideas Network, an email notification services with information stations can incorporate in their own schedules.

Siemering has been honored with many awards, including the NPR Lifetime Achievement Award and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but has other priorities. “The point is that all this experience gives you an opportunity to do so much more and also to learn so much more,” he says.

“I never use the word ‘retirement,’” he says. “I’m only 73.”

Ready Bill Siemering’s blog on Encore.org.