Eh!woza: Intersection of Art and Science to Engage Youth on Tuberculosis

"An urgent need ...exists for projects that engage community members as active partners in reducing the impact of TB and other diseases."

Eh!woza (from the isiXhosa for "Hey! Come with us") is a programme designed to engage community members as active partners in reducing the impact of diseases, especially tuberculosis (TB) in Khayelitsha township, located on the Cape of South Africa. Khayelitsha is iXhosa for "Our New Home", as it is home to migrant labourers, making it the largest and densest of the townships. The focus on TB and youth is driven by the disease taking its toll on young and economically active youth in impoverished communities where overcrowding, poverty, and malnutrition contribute to the disease burden.

The programme operates via public engagement with youth production of documentary films about their own experiences with TB. It began in 2013 when an artist and students from the University of Capetown filmed a health workshop to capture how TB was understood and experienced by learners (14-18 years old)(available via Mindset TV and Open HD network). The filming was done as part of a winter school run by Ikamva Youth.

Post graduate students chose to continue to engage communities for their doctoral research in order to encourage community agency and a localised response to social environments rather than external interpretation. In April of each year there is a screening of the previous year's films and a closing ceremony for previous participants attended by an audience of approximately 80-100 from Ikamva Youth who are then invited to apply.

After the selection and parent consultation, six science workshops are held to "encourage... [learners] to engage with biomedical research and to merge the biology of TB with its social implications." These are typically a seminar by a senior researcher followed by laboratory work in partnership with PhD students and postdoctoral research fellows. Page 4 of the study contains a list of workshop contents. These workshops were conceived to help participants understand accurate information, as the first two years of interviewing showed that township residents have limited accurate information about the disease, leading to increased stigma.

A two-week intensive film production workshop follows during school holidays. The hands-on teaching method allows learners to "navigate complex software as well as camera and sound equipment." Facilitated interviews between local township residents and participants are conducted with participants using cameras to record. Results of the third year of filming are described on page 5 of the study and led to a following year of more personalised stories including "an alumni group began producing an independent film exploring the lives of, and violence towards, LGBTQI+ high-school learners in Khayelitsha."

An external evaluation conducted on October of 2015
investigated shifting needs and outcomes. A change was made that eliminated the infographic design stage, leading to "a more open cinematographic approach, where an emic and interpretative perspective....This, in turn led to the generation of a nuanced and richer description of the social determinants of the disease in Khayelitsha...."

New initiatives in 2018 included "a collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières(MSF) [thst] aims to bring together teenagers living with drug resistant TB, young musicians, and scientists....The second initiative [was] a pilot study in collaboration with Wits Institute for Socio-Economic Research (WiSER) that seeks to combine the Eh!woza model with biomedical research to investigate notions of sexuality among young people in South Africa and how these might influence the uptake of sexual health programmes," influenced by the alumni film on LGBTQI+ people.