Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS Prevention Campaign in Wongonyi Community

There are several reasons why I choose Wongonyi location in Taita/Taveta district, Kenya as the setting for this campaign. First and foremost, statistics (UNAIDS, 2000) reveal that AIDS is becoming a number one killer in Kenya with communities within Taita/Taveta district being no exception. This makes the need for reproductive health and HIV/AIDS awareness campaign very vital.

Secondly, as a native from this area I am sure to be more easily accepted and given all the support necessary to accomplish this campaign. Also having worked in the area as a teacher, administrator and community leader for over ten years, I feel equipped with the necessary background experience to undertake such a campaign. This fact gives me the added advantages attendant to being an insider. I can effectively rely on the network that I had earlier established to achieve the goals of this campaign, something that usually takes time for an outsider to establish. Finally, my philosophy of life is behind the driving force that takes me back to do something positive to a community that has done so much to make me what I am right now. In Taita, a village raises a child.

Before getting into the field, I will identify the current major stakeholders with concerns within the district. My intention is to effectively “sell” this campaign strategy to these stakeholders and hopefully get funding for this project. Here I target the various development agencies for examples the World Bank, Rockefeller foundation, Ford foundation etc. for technical support and funding. This is a longtime study that will initially start with a pilot project within Wongonyi location then eventually spread to cover the whole of Taita/Taveta district.

Since the success of any campaign is heavily dependent on proper planning, my initial task is to set up a strong team to work with. Members of my campaign team will include individuals who represent the stakeholders and opinion leaders who represent different sectors of Wongonyi community. With assistance from my team, I intend to use census data, surveys, questionnaires, focus groups and brief interviews, to conduct research on the demographics and sociographics of Wongonyi community. Equipped with the necessary data, I intend to develop a clearly focused social Action campaign plan based on Smith & Wood (1998) three rhetorical strategies namely: identification, enactment and evaluation.

Smith and Wood (1998) posit that a campaign does not take place within a vacuum and its relative success is measured against ideological expectations. Ideology as I use it here is a set of ideas employed by people to make sense of their physical and social environments (Smith & Wood, 1998). Mine will be a social marketing campaign that aims at increasing awareness among the community members about the dangers of getting infected with the HIV virus through improper sexual behavior. My campaign will draw from the value and belief of maintaining Taita traditions that forbid extramarital sex and sex before marriage. I will seek to identify the existing traditional Taita dances that emphasize this value and creatively load new messages to include the current dangers of getting infected with HIV/AIDS.

The first rhetorical strategy that I intend to employ in going about this social Action campaign is identification. According to Smith & Wood (1998) identification begins when a group defines a problem in the status quo. With the background knowledge that HIV/AIDS virus spread is mainly due to ignorance within the community, sensitization and increasing public awareness will be the motivation for my campaign.

Enactment will be next rhetorical focus that I will bring to the campaign. Smith and Wood (1998) describe enactment as the process through which goals of a campaign are translated into action that can be interpreted by an audience. Enactment occurs when action is rendered symbolic-that is when activities make sense to someone outside the campaign. At this stage of my campaign I will be trying to turn ideas into action.

My campaign targets institutions like the village polytechnics, Adult literacy classes, men and women groups and community barazas (scheduled village development meetings chaired by the chief or assistant chief) where traditional Taita dancing currently takes place in one form or another. Since these communication “nerve centers” of Wongonyi village usually engage in traditional dancing, I intend to organize and network with the key players to ensure that AIDS messages feature prominently in their dancing and singing.

My campaign will have the goal of creating a “buzz” throughout the whole of Wongonyi community. Through seeding these nerves centers to engage and entertain themselves and others through AIDS message-laden traditional dances for a long enough period, I hope to get the message spreading throughout the whole community. The intent is to have this intervention seep in so stealthy through no major disruption or rearrangements of the traditional dances.

For example through using an established group like the Mrangi Women Dance Troupe to entertain members during barazas with traditional dances laden with AIDS prevention messages, I intend to “shock” the audience into the recognition of the existence of this killer disease. Also through other occasions that bring the community member to a central place like for example the annual Wongonyi agricultural fair, school harambees etc. I will try to increase visibility of this ongoing campaign process while at the same spreading the message.

Finally, the last rhetorical strategy in my campaign will be evaluation. Evaluation as defined by Smith and Wood (1998) is the process through which campaign planners assess the success to which their actions have met their objectives. According to Smith and Wood (1998) evaluation does not occur at a particular time but rather takes place throughout a healthy campaign in the form of feedback. It will be my intention to have a plan that seeks feedback at various stages along the campaign process. For example at the initial stage, the plan should provide opportunity for the campaign team to determine whether the medium is effective in delivering the message. This will be done using interviews; focus groups, ethnographic studies or what is generally called textual feedback used in measuring qualitative goals (Smith & Wood, 1998).

While not trying to distract the participant from their ordinary daily actions, I will also observe and keep records of what is going on through videotapes, audiotapes, pictures and thickly written field notes that try to capture the campaign process. This study should provide descriptive accounts of my experience in the field, giving a picture of the setting and the actual communication processes as they unfolded as well as emerging hunches or flashes of insight that are closely connected to my experience. “These should include tentative pieces of analysis, methodological difficulties and personal emotional experiences” (Lofland & Lofland, 1995, p. 88).