<![CDATA[Public policy affects citizens’ daily lives, yet policy information is often communicated in technical and formal language that can be difficult for the public to understand. This community service program aimed to strengthen the capacity of the ManifesThink youth community in Surabaya to translate complex policy issues into accessible public education content through podcasts. The program adopted a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach involving eight active community members as co-designers, policy issue researchers, scriptwriters, hosts, producers, and digital dissemination managers. Conducted from July to December 2025, the activities included an initial assessment and focus group discussion, workshops on policy issue research, audio-script writing and podcast production, collaborative script development, recording and post-production, digital dissemination, and final evaluation. The program produced PolCast (Policy Podcast) ManifesThink as a community-managed policy literacy platform and generated seven educational podcast episodes, exceeding the initial target of five episodes. Evaluation results showed that the participants’ average capacity score increased from 56.5 in the pre-test to 73.0 in the post-test, representing an improvement of 16.5 points or approximately 29.2%. Improvements were observed across four areas: policy issue research, audio-script writing, podcast production techniques, and digital dissemination strategies, with the largest improvement occurring in podcast production skills. These findings indicate that participatory podcast production can strengthen both the substantive and technical capacities of youth communities to communicate public policy issues in a more accessible and engaging manner. The program also demonstrates the potential of community-managed podcasts as a sustainable medium for expanding policy literacy and public access to policy information.]]>
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