🎙️ How a Small Podcast network building Community Resilience in Myanmar
In 2025, we aimed to reach 50,000 people to engage with meaningful content on the internet. By the end of the year, a total of 60,699 people became regular listeners of Burma Podcast Network episodes, spending 78,361 hours listening to one or more of our podcasts. This listening time is equal to watching the movie Titanic over 24,110 times from start to finish. Unlike the movie, our journey in 2025 did not sink. Instead, our podcast network stayed on a steady path of growth, and we would like to share how we achieved this and built a much-needed podcast community for Myanmar.
Here is how we built a Myanmar podcast community for resilience and democracy in 2025:
At the beginning of the year, we made several survey calls to potential listeners from different age groups, backgrounds, and occupations. We asked them a simple question: do you listen to our podcasts?
Seventy-five percent of our friends and colleagues gave a “suspicious yes,” meaning they had heard about our podcasts but never really listened, or they answered a clear “no.” These honest answers were very helpful in understanding our real target audience. Only 25 percent shared how much they loved our podcasts and mentioned some of their favorite shows from the Burma Podcast Network channel. We collected hundreds of feedback messages from our friends and online community and highlighted these key points:
● “Podcasts can be entertaining too. Please don’t make every episode a lecture on human rights, social issues, or democracy.”
● “You should try TikTok, where real people inside Myanmar are active and engaged.”
● “It’s hard to listen to a full episode. Short clips help us remember, and we can listen to the full episode later before bed.”
● “Enough politics. Give us something to relax with.
Photo : 16 Different Podcast Shows available on Burma Podcast Network
It was not easy to accept that our podcasts were not always entertaining or engaging, despite the effort and research we put into each episode. However, instead of defending our work, we chose to adjust our approach. We learned how to balance entertainment with meaning and how to deliver values through storytelling, sound design, and human experience.Our move to TikTok was part of this learning. It helped us reach people inside Myanmar who are active, curious, and share their opinions. Reaching more than 2.3 million viewers showed us that there is a real need for content that is both accessible and thoughtful.
Our growing audience across Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms also helped us earn the trust of new partner organizations and talented individuals. Together, we began campaigning on important and sensitive topics such as landmine education, digital parenting, conflict-related sexual assaults, drug addiction, and journalism on the frontline.
In 2025, we teamed up with two award-winning journalists, many poets, artists, and scriptwriters, dozens of voice-over talents, and received support from five international organizations. Together, we produced 49 episodes, trained more than 40 new podcasters, and exhibited a public podcast experimental lab.
Photo : Public Podcast Experiment Lab in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
We are open to collaborating with community broadcasting partners to share radio- suitable segments and radio drama series that aim to ease the pain of severe hardship in war-affected and refugee areas. We also realized that frequent internet outages and high data costs make it difficult for many listeners to access our episodes. To address this, we are working on providing SD cards and battery- operated radio devices loaded with over 100 episodes. These efforts will help our network reach communities with no internet access, especially community libraries, hospitals, community schools, and IDP shelters.
We would like to express our gratitude to our listeners, partners, collaborators, and supporters for their trust and support. We want to be clear: we see Burma Podcast Network not only as a podcast platform, but as a public service that fills the need for independent and alternative media for millions of Myanmar internet users. We also want to thank our partners who help bring our podcasts to areas with limited internet access, using alternative communication models and community resilience experiments.
Photo : Medic Lady on the Frontline: Starting her day with porridge, a cheroot, and a BPN podcast.
In a time of conflict and uncertainty, we believe steady work, honest reflection, and long-term commitment matter. When life is full of struggle and injustice, we hope our podcasts can offer a small light of hope and help people keep faith in humanity and a better tomorrow.
Looking ahead to 2026, our commitment remains the same. We will continue to encourage thinking, talking, and listening. We will stay present for our audience and reliable for our partners.