Reaching Youth Worldwide: Part III - JHU/CCP Youth Programmes - Africa

JHU/CCP Youth Programmes
1995-2000

AFRICA

Africa Alive!
(1998-ongoing)

What it is: Africa Alive! is an innovative, multinational network of youth and AIDS organisations aimed to reach and empower youth with HIV/AIDS prevention programmes using popular entertainment. Formerly, there were scattered activities to fight AIDS, but through Africa Alive! almost 100 public and private sector organisations in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have joined together in a coordinated strategic effort to address the crisis. Africa Alive! provides that inspiration and means for these organisations to work together to scale up the response toward AIDS on a regional level.

How it works: Community-based campaigns support mass media campaigns by using entertaining approaches such as puppet shows, rallies, and concert performances by popular musicians. The entertainers share information and messages about HIV/AIDS and how to change behavior to prevent the spread of the disease. African youth are encouraged to write postcards and diary entries to share personal stories of living with HIV/AIDS with national and international audiences via local and national media and the Internet.

Results/Status: Needs assessments identifying the current status of HIV/AIDS have been completed in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia while those in Nigeria and South Africa are being finalised. Groups have performed four traveling rallies in Zambia and plan future rallies in Nigeria and Tanzania. In towns around Nairobi, 11 puppet shows reached 6,000 people. Nearly 100 disc jockeys, musicians, and athletes participated in role model training workshops in Zambia and Kenya. Members of Africa Alive! in Zambia and Kenya along with JHU/CCP staff are designing a standard curriculum for role model training. In developing fundraising proposals, Africa Alive! has established a relationship with Artists Against AIDS Worldwide (AAAW). A network of musicians, AAAW is dedicated to mobilising resources for the HIV/AIDS agenda worldwide. Africa Alive! and other youth programmes will benefit from funds generated through AAAW as well as from the establishment of direct linkages between selected artists and programmes on the ground.

Caring Understanding Partners (CUP) Initiative
(1996-ongoing)

What it is: The CUP Initiative is a partnership of sports associations and health organisations that promotes healthy lifestyles through organised sports events. Programmes managers from 31 African nations and 175 policy-makers have endorsed the Initiative's "game plan" to encourage young men and their partners to adopt healthy behaviors. Health behaviors addressed include STIs/HIV/AIDS prevention, family planning promotion, and child immunisations.

How it works: The CUP Initiative works through local partners to develop high-impact public health messages aimed at influencing the health behavior of young men and their partners and to deliver these messages during sports events using mass media, interpersonal communication and counseling, and community mobilisation. For instance, the Break the Silence: Talk about AIDS campaign was launched in October 1999 in Kenya during the Confederation of East and Central African Football Association Under 20 Soccer Tournament. The campaign included information training sessions for players and coaches, health information referral booths in the stadium, prominent speakers addressing HIV/AIDS issues followed by a minute of silence, telephone hotlines, radio and TV broadcasts, and health videos.

Results/Status: After the Break the Silence: Talk about AIDS campaign, almost 80 percent of respondents said it was the first time they had heard or seen health messages at a football match and they liked it. The tournament activities also helped pave the way for Kenya's leaders to make AIDS a priority issue. Another CUP campaign entitled Play for Life took place from January 19 to February 7, 2002 in Mali, Nigeria, Ghana, and Burkina Faso as part of the African Cup of Nations, the largest sporting event of the continent. As part of the CUP Initiative, young men were urged during the various countries' soccer matches to "play for life" and prevent HIV/AIDS. Because this venue has proven so effective, programme planners are working with countries to develop a blueprint strategy and materials to expand CUP interventions to other sports events.

The Sante Familiale Et Prevention Du Sida (SFPS) Project
(1995 - ongoing)

What it is: The SFPS project is an eight-year regional project in French-speaking West and Central Africa. The youth activities within this project include a variety of high-quality media products: the Wake Up Africa! campaign, the Yamba Songo - Cles de la Vie radio series, and its spin-off comic book and cassette. The campaign objectives for youth include increasing the number who practice low-risk behavior, increasing their knowledge of quality reproductive health services and access to them, continuing to strengthen and promote services for adolescents, reinforcing youth counseling and outreach activities, and providing integrated family planning and STIs/HIV/AIDS counseling.

How it works: To motivate youth to accept personal responsibility to halt the spread of AIDS, SFPS produced Wake Up Africa!, a campaign featuring over 20 West and Central African popular artists performing in a theme song, a video clip, a documentary, and radio and TV spots. During the media campaign, NGOs and community-based organisations carried out community activities while a radio serial drama was broadcast on local and regional stations. A comic strip based on the radio drama appeared in the bimonthly issue of a regional youth magazine. Youth NGOs and community groups used cassettes of the radio drama in health centers.

Results/Status: July 1999 survey data indicated that about one-half of the intended audience heard the Wake Up Africa! theme song, more than one-fourth recalled the theme, and one-fifth reported positive behavior change such as using condoms or abstaining from sex as a result of exposure to the campaign. The project launched a comprehensive youth HIV/AIDS campaign in 2001, focusing on services for youth such as hotlines, volunteer counseling and testing, youth-friendly health centers, and access to peer educational activities.

Burkina Faso - Adolescent Reproductive Health Campaign
(1998)

What it is: With funding from the World Bank Population and AIDS Project, JHU/CCP collaborated with the National AIDS Control Program to conduct a multimedia campaign in sex health regions of Burkina Faso. The primary audience consisted of youth between the ages of 13 and 20 who lived in rural areas and were in or out of school.

How it works: The campaign's focus was a 26-episode radio drama series entitled La Famille Boanga II, which covered a variety of topics: STIs/HIV/AIDS, sexual responsibility, unintended pregnancy, family life education, female circumcision, and family laws. The IEC Working Group established under the project coordinated the official campaign launch featuring a speech by the President, the development and airing of a youth variety show produced by youth for youth, theatrical performances, and the production of campaign materials in French and five national languages.

Results/Status: Materials produced for the campaign included a logo; a 26-episode radio drama series; a 21 episode youth variety show entitled Parole des Jeunes, Sante des Jeunes (Youth Speak, Youth Health); radio and television spots; posters; brochures for youth and parents; a comic strip; and theater plays.

Ghana - Stop AIDS, Love Life
(1999 - ongoing)

What it is: In February 2000, the First Lady of Ghana and JHU/PCS launched the country's first national HIV/AIDS prevention campaign, Stop AIDS, Love Life. The objective to the campaign is to get AIDS prevention on the policy and social agendas and motivate young people to act responsibly to prevent the spread of AIDS. The campaign focuses on personal risk perception, peer pressure, and social support issues. The slogan, "If it's not on, it's not in," was developed for the first phase of the campaign.

How it works: Three of the five TV spots promote the ABC's of prevention: Abstain from sex, Be faithful to a partner who is faithful to you, use Condoms with every sexual encounter. The campaign features an AIDS song performed by 20 musicians who donated their time and talents. One million leaflets and booklets, printed for distribution to health facilities, schools, churches, clubs, and other community organisations, explain Ghana-specific HIV/AIDS issues in a Question-&-Answer format.

Results/Status: The Ghana Ministry of Communication helped conduct audio and video presentations across rural areas reaching an estimated 4 million people. A traveling rally is visiting 120 towns across the nation to promote HIV prevention in entertaining and informative ways. The campaign introduces the concept of compassionate treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS, and more leaflets and booklets are to be published and distributed.

Haiti - Youth Sexual Responsibility Project and Youth Reproductive Health Project
(1995-1996)

What it is: The Youth Sexual Responsibility Project was a USAID-funded pilot project carried out by the Centers for Development and Health that aimed to reduce teenage pregnancy, STIs, and HIV/AIDS prevalence rates among youth in three slum areas of the capital, Port-au-Prince. In February 1996, merged with the UNFPA-funded Youth Reproductive Health Project, implemented by the Foundation for Reproductive Health and Family Life Education Familiale - FOSREF), which operates a youth center in a middle-class neighborhood of Port-au-Prince.

How it works: These two complementary projects sponsored youth peer educator training, a theater contests, and a 10-episode radio variety programme entitled By Youth, for Youth. Materials produced for the project included a logo identifying youth service delivery points, a music video, and an educational kit featuring the Road of Life board game.

Results/Status: Involving peer educators at all levels of project development encouraged youth involvement, advocacy with their peers, and effective promotion of healthy sexual behaviors. FOSREF carried on the project activities through 1998 and opened two additional youth-serving clinics outside Port-au-Prince. FOSREF continued to work with peer educators using the manual developed to train them in interpersonal communication.

Kenya - Bungoma HIV/AIDS Initiative
(1998-1999)

What it is: This HIV/AIDS campaign was implemented in Bungoma, Kenya, where the practice of male circumcision conducted by traditional healers in unsanitary conditions is an important factor contributing to the spread of the disease. Young boys in Bungoma are at high risk of acquiring HIV/AIDS, because they are encouraged to experiment sexually at a young age with girls, and because traditional healers use the same knife to circumcise several males. JHU/PCS together with the Ministry of Health, Bungoma District Health Management Team implemented this HIV/AIDS campaign aimed at circumcisers, training teachers, and reaching youth through school and sports interventions about the link between unsanitary, local circumcision practices and HIV/AIDS transmission. Workshops provided teachers with information on AIDS prevention and transmission, and HIV/AIDS material was disseminated to team members and crowds during inter-school soccer competitions.

Results/Status Advocacy interventions sensitised 35 community leaders and provided them with information to speak up in the community against performing male circumcision in a way that facilitates the transmission of HIV/AIDS. Workshops reached 700 teachers who brought AIDS-prevention messages to their students and encouraged them to compose and perform poems, songs, and dramas to deliver messages to other youth. The inclusion of various members of the community in workshops and seminars also fostered a feeling of local ownership and loyalty to the project, which bodes well for the longevity of campaign messages.

Kenya - Girls' Education Project: Healthy Futures
(1998 - ongoing)

What it is: Under PCS, the Academy for Educational Development (AED) partnered with the Maendeleo Ya Wanawake Organization (MYWO), a Kenyan women's organisation, to address the high primary school drop-out rate of Kenyan girls through the Healthy Futures project.

The purpose of the project is to reduce barriers to primary school completion among Kenyan girls with a special emphasis on barriers related to reproductive health. Using Participatory Learning and Action exercises, communities identified barriers related to girls' education and developed appropriate solutions.

How it works: In 31 communities in five districts, the project established primary school girls' clubs, which provide reproductive health guidance and counseling and also conduct income-generating activities as educational incentives for girls. The project recruited adult role models to promote girls' education among parents, produced a comic book, and sponsored girls' education themes in national musical and cultural festivals.

Results/Status: Though a formal evaluation was not done by PCS/AED, anecdotal information indicated positive experiences within the Healthy Futures project. Overall, the guidance and counseling activities, parental role models, and comic book were perceived to be the most successful components of the project while the income-generating activities were deemed to require more work. Interested in Healthy Futures project, the Rockefeller Foundation has supported MYWO, since July 2000, with $300,000 to expand and continue the project.

Senegal - Youth Reproductive Health Project
(1998 - 1999)

What it is: The Senegal Youth Reproductive Health Project was implemented in Kaolack specifically to increase the awareness of young adolescent men in reproductive health issues.

How it works: An association of young community health workers spearheaded an information and referral hotline. The hotline was located in the family planning center. To raise funds for the hotline, health workers created a theater and poem contest for adolescents, which concluded with an awards ceremony. Songs from the theater production and poems created during the contest were videotaped and distributed to health centers in urban areas. Local radio stations provided coverage of the contest and promoted the hotline during popular youth programming.

Results/Status: With the proceeds made from the theater and poem awards ceremony, a telephone center was installed to ensure the sustainability of the hotline. A percentage of the income generated at the center was used for further IEC and staff motivational activities.

Zambia Family Planning Services Project - Trendsetters
(1995 - 1998)

What it is:Trendsetters is a sexual and reproductive health newspaper produced by youth for youth through the NGO Youth Media Group (YMG).

How it works: About 10,000 copies of Trendsetters are produced and sold monthly at commercial outlets. YMG introduced a second newspaper, Trendsetters School, which is distributed for free in schools. Currently, 50,000 papers are distributed monthly. YMG also produces supplements and other print materials for special occasion such as World AIDS Day.

Results/Status:Trendsetters won a Global Media Award in 1997. The two newspapers continue to be produced by the YMG through the new Zambia Integrated Health Programme, which replaced the Zambia Family Planning Services project.