Canadian Brigitte Alepin’s brainchild Radio-Dodo is a bilingual radio station with stories, songs and segments to help Syria’s scattered kids get to sleep

“Attention ladies and gentlemen, come closer! The circus – and your favourite radio show – is about to start,” says a French-Canadian veteran journalist in French. He turns to his co-host, a Syrian storyteller, who repeats the words into her microphone, this time in Arabic.

In the tiny downtown studio of a student radio station in Montreal, Bernard Derome and Marya Zarif are recording a radio show for Syrian refugee children.

Launched in 2017 with the support of the Canadian Commission for Unesco, Radio-Dodo, or Sleepytime-Radio, has already broadcast 37 episodes online and through Radio-Rozana, a Syrian radio station based in Paris.



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The weekly bilingual show mixes stories, songs and segments about everything from tying your shoelaces to why your milk teeth fall out. The aim is to help Syrian refugee children around the world forget about their worries and fall asleep at night.

The woman behind the show is Brigitte Alepin, a French-Canadian tax expert whose Syrian grandfather immigrated to Canada in the early 20th century.

When the Syrian war erupted in 2011, Alepin said she felt shocked and helpless; only a few years earlier, she had visited her grandfather’s hometown of Aleppo with her young son.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Radio-Dodo founder Brigitte Alepin: ‘I told myself I would never be able to feel good about myself again if I didn’t find a way to help.’ Photograph: Clothilde Goujard

Throughout the trip he had played with local children; now, she couldn’t help wondering about them.

“I asked myself, how is it that life makes it possible for my boy – who had been in Aleppo – now to be safe at home in Quebec?” she said. “I told myself I would never be able to feel good about myself again if I didn’t find a way to help.”

For a while, Alepin wondered how she could help Syrian refugees half a world away, but as she discussed the problem with a friend, an idea formed: radio waves could cross borders and reach an audience anywhere around the world.

“We were talking and a little while later, I had an intuition: I would try to make a radio show for children,” said Alepin.



She gathered a small team of Syrian, Algerian and Canadian volunteers to help her organize the show, find content and sign up storytellers.

Prominent Canadian writers including Kim Thuy and Wajdi Mouawad, and former Canadian Olympic athlete Marie-Ève Marleau have appeared on the show to read stories or discuss their jobs.

Most of the audience is in Turkey and Quebec. One regular listener is Rahaf, a 10-year-old Syrian refugee from Damascus who came to Montreal in 2016 with her two brothers and their parents.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rahaf is an avid Radio-Dodo listener: ‘I just listen on my bed and I sing along.’ Photograph: Clothilde Goujard

Rahaf uses her brother’s laptop to listen to the show as she falls asleep; her favourite story so far was about a dog taking the bus by himself.

“I just listen on my bed and I sing along,” she said in French, her new language.

Rahaf’s mother, Basma – who asked for the family’s surname to be withheld – said that her husband and sons escaped to Jordan first. But when Basma and Rahaf attempted to follow, they were arrested and jailed for 18 months.

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After being released, she and her siblings lived in a refugee camp in Jordan for three years; conditions were harsh, and there was no chance for the children to go to school.



Now Rahaf is getting used to her new life, going to school during the day and playing at home. “I like telling myself stories and when I have a new book, I read it to myself,” she said.

Alepin says she wants to continue spreading love and joy to refugee children and plans to further expand her project. She has recently found a partner radio station in Mali to broadcast her show to children in the French-speaking country, and hopes that eventually Radio-Dodo can become a global radio show for child refugees around the world.

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