My name's Lisa Pellegrino. At Radio Adelaide, I volunteer. I do a couple of community radio stations, predominantly music ones, but in addition I also do advertisements or fill in for other shows.

I'm half Italian. So I don't like to say I'm an extrovert, I like to say I'm culturally primed.

I was studying anthropology for 3.5 years and I was quite good friends with a couple of the lecturers and they said, "Well, why don't you go to this small town in rural Nepal called Tansen? And there's a radio station there, you've got radio background." I went to Nepal on my own and what I did was I worked in a community radio and television station. And the aim of both of these stations is to provide disadvantaged groups such as lower-caste, women, the poor, indigenous groups of Nepal a chance to have a voice.

Well, a typical day in Tansen, I'd wake up, freezing cold - it was very, very cold weather - and always be greeted by the beautiful mother of the house who I called Nadira Mum. She'd always set out breakfast for me - a cup of chai and toast. I usually started... would walk down, spend a bit of time talking to the locals who I'd become quite good friends with, like various shop owners and kind of...those key community figures, just like you have in any sort of place. There's always those people who are always in the same spot. FM Cafe, where the local FM radio people, Radio Muktinath, come. We'd have a chat to them, go down to the CMC, which is the TV station, and would look at what the people were doing, maybe give suggestions. I also started writing up grant proposals for the CMC and the radio station, so I'd work on that.

Just doing some work at the station and doing some programming. Now I'm just gonna go for a bit of coffee. Need some space. All's well. Bye-bye. The UNESCO Finding a Voice Project I think for the small communities in Nepal and for Nepal overall, have been amazing and astounding. I mean, every day I was taken back and found it beautiful - the fact that these institutions and these media outlets were providing the community and the volunteers who ran it with so much opportunity, empowerment, selfworth, education, experience. So people in villages were finding information about their rights, about health, women's health.

In September of 2007 I had organised a fundraiser called Say What? I went to Nepal to a rural town where I worked at a community radio and TV station and these particular stations were for... The aim of the fundraiser was to raise money just for the particular Radio Muktinath FM and the CMC. So we had bands playing, we had DJs downstairs, and it was just a really fun event. And I was really pleasantly surprised, because - I'm not joking - I literally thought that there'd be 20 people there. And eventually there was, like, 300 people and we raised around $2,000.

If a 4'11" girl can go by herself, you know, like, into a country in a situation that is quite, you know, different and extreme... It changed me in the sense of knowing that I can do things like this. I absolutely loved the experience. It was beautiful. The people were amazing. And it's a country and a cause that I definitely want to continue to be involved with. And it's great because the rewards, not just for yourself but more so for the community, are worth everything.