Umleavyo

Developed and produced over a period of 14 months, "Umleavyo" is a radio series consisting of 12 multi-format radio episodes (of 30 minutes each). Its name is from the Swahili proverb, "Umleavyo ndivyo akuavyo: The way you raise a child is the way she will grow up". It was broadcast between July 2010 and January 2011 through a regional radio station, Radio SAUT FM, which covers Mwanza Region.

The content of all episodes was selected through several collaborative 2-day workshops that involved the radio production team at the NIMR, representatives from the Journalism/Mass Media Department of St. Augustine University (as well as Radio SAUT FM), parents and adolescents from a village outside Mwanza, and in consultation with district community development officers. The resulting 12 episodes explored these themes:

1. Parenting During Adolescence
2. Spousal Relationships and Parent-Adolescent Interactions
3. Parents as Role Models
4. Listening to Each Other
5. Monitoring and Provision
6. Dealing with Peer Groups
7. Understanding Risk Behaviours
8. Freedom and Control
9. Breaking Silence
10. Heshima "Respect"
11. Transmitting Morals
12. Parenting Plans

The episodes focused on different aspects of how parenting practices can influence adolescent health and development in positive and negative ways and contained different programme formats:

• Hosts' narration and discussion, delivered in a dialogue format by a male and a female host.
• Segments from community interviews, stories, and testimonies.
• A soap opera segment (10-minute slot per episode), focusing on events in the lives of 2 fictional families, using the Sabido method where characters evolve and change for better and worse, according to the choices they make and the environment in which they live. This segment aimed to strengthen engagement through the para-social relationships that audience members make with positive or negative drama characters. Amateur actors, drawn from the team of parents and adolescents (with whom organisers also worked during the research), provided the voice talent for the soap opera. These parents and adolescents also co-produced the scripts and storylines for the family characters with the hope of ensuring appropriate language use.
• Feedback (via call-in) from listeners.
• Music and poetry, with content related to parenting.

The basis for the radio series was a community-based intervention research project called Mema kwa Jamii (Good Things for Communities; MKJ), which accompanied the scale-up of Mema kwa Vijana (Good Things for Youth - see Related Summaries, below), an adolescent sexual and reproductive health programme in rural Mwanza. Carried out in 4 communities, this project aimed to address social factors influencing adolescent sexual risk by mobilising communities through participatory, peer-led parenting groups where the influence of parenting is discussed and analysed. Parents and adolescent actively participated in the research, which provided the materials to develop and produce the "Umleavyo" radio series.

Organisers relied on multiple behaviour change theories and techniques to inform "Umleavyo". Supplying information about the influence of parenting on adolescent health and about adolescent health risks addresses individual and social cognition (knowledge of severity, benefits and process of new behaviours), which is included in the Health Belief Model and Diffusion of Innovation. They also based programme elements emphasising performance techniques on Social Learning Theory, e.g., modelling behaviours, illustrative cases, and cues to action. Demonstrating how problems might be solved and clarifying which barriers and facilitators exist draws on the Health Belief Model and on Social Learning Theory. The radio series revealed how parenting innovators and early adopters address adolescent health issues, which builds on theories of social support and Diffusion of Innovation. Entertainment-education theory, in addition to the active involvement of ordinary rural inhabitants, was integral to the series in order to boost different modes of persuasive communication.

HIV/AIDS, Youth

According to NIMR, radio is the most widespread media channel in rural communities in Tanzania. The organisation contends that radio programmes that mix entertainment and education are a proven medium to improve people's knowledge, create positive attitudes, shift norms, and change behaviours, but their effectiveness is greatest when community-based support activities and locally engaged and produced media are added. That is why this project drew on the active participation of parents/caregivers in the radio production and integrated the radio soap opera in each episode in order to strengthen parents' and other audience members' engagement with research findings.

NIMR claims that, in the context of Tanzania's HIV epidemic, the role of parents and/or primary caregivers has received little attention, both in terms of research and interventions, even though parents play a crucial role in young people's health and health behaviours (according to the World Health Organization, or WHO). The values that parents transmit, their modelling of behaviours, the connections they make with children, the material and psychosocial support they provide, and the community norms they support all influence young people's outlook on life and help to shape youths' (future) behaviours.

"This was NIMR's first media production. The radio series built up institutional capacity and strengthened linkages between researchers, radio practitioners, and audience (through the participation of parents/adolescents and program feedback mechanisms). There is a strong interest within NIMR to continue to use radio to engage with the public and promote a better understanding of health-related research."

NIMR used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to assess the effectiveness of the project: observation, project activity logbook, interviews with key informants in communities, and regular group discussions with listening groups. Also, to measure the impact of the project, NIMR conducted a post-test survey that consisted of a brief quantitative questionnaire that was administered face-to-face to about 1,400 parents and adolescents, spread out over the radio stations' coverage area. A team of 4 interviewers (separate from the radio production team) carried out the survey in 20 sites, mostly villages around Mwanza, plus a few sites within Mwanza. Data analysis is ongoing; NIMR anticipates publishing the results in 2013.

In the meantime, organisers reflect: "Through the collaborative framework of this project, and multiple workshops, each partner gained valuable skills to facilitate public engagement. Our radio-based project also allowed rural communities to engage with health-related research. Our focus on parenting, alongside attention to other health-related research, introduced media and public attention to a research theme that has thus far been rarely addressed in media-based activities. HIV prevention media campaigns in sub-Saharan Africa often target youth directly but have neglected the role of adult gatekeepers and, especially, parents/caregivers."