Culture and HIV/AIDS

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Title of project

Body, Mind and Soul

Organisation

ABC Ulwazi Radio

Country/region

South Africa, all nine provinces

Project focus

ABC Ulwazi develops, scripts, produces and broadcasts 12-minute episodes of the Educational Entertainment radio soap opera series, Body, Mind and Soul in four major languages, English, Zulu, Sotho and Afrikaans. The target audience is young people aged 18 to 35, and older adults.

Each episode is built around critical HIV and AIDS issues and messages that move beyond the mainstream understanding of HIV and AIDS. Episode topics include primary and secondary abstinence, partner reduction, faithfulness, delayed sexual debut, condom use, antiretroviral drugs, post exposure prophylaxis, PMTCT, and HIV testing.

Body, Mind and Soul aims to influence positive change in HIV preventive behaviour, to support attitudes that overcome stigma, and to promote awareness of prevention, treatment, care and support strategies.

Background

ABC Ulwazi was established as a non-government organisation in 1994 with a mandate to help create and develop a strong community radio sector in order for vital educational and developmental information (with HIV/AIDS being high on that list) to be communicated to disadvantaged communities. This was at a time when community radio was in its infancy and required (and still requires) developing the community radio sector into a communication channel which can create effective dialogue and a powerful voice within civil society.

The organisation has been a leader in the training of community radio staff, having secured training funds for 2000 broadcasters in its first decade. Trainees benefit from a fully digital radio training and broadcast studio, two large lecture rooms and individual voice booths.
As well as educational entertainment dramas, ABC Ulwazi produces educational and developmental radio programmes in a variety of formats including documentaries and features.

Every year it produces some 4000 hours of educational programmes in all 11 official languages of South Africa. Amongst its clients are government departments, various educational and developmental NGOs and institutes and international agencies. ABC Ulwazi has worked with 60 community radio stations (CRS), forming a network that covers all of South Africa, from deep rural areas to urban informal settlements, with a combined potential reach of over 4 million listeners every day.

ABC Ulwazi has increasingly been fulfilling a consultancy role, with assistance in community radio start up and licence application for community radio stations as well as educational radio and edutainment radio guidance for organisations such as Soul City.

Level of cultural intervention used in the project

Culture as Context:The interaction with the community at large is something culturally familiar in most South African communities, from Lekgotla to Imbizo. Culturally these interactions occur when communities need to discuss issues of importance to the survival of the community itself or its members. HIV and AIDS has become such a survival issue in South Africa.

While there are cultural taboos in discussing HIV/AIDS, the use of carefully researched and culturally sensitive dramas, dealing with both the problems of youth and intergenerational conflicts and allowing for listener feedback, has enabled radio become a new and valuable community meeting place.

Culture as Expression: Body, Mind and Soul has received widespread acceptance and appreciation by listeners in various communities. The characters and storylines present contemporary scenarios and often reflect people’s real life experience. However by only broadcasting in four major languages, listeners who speak minor dialects, which may amount to the main local language of a participating community radio station, are excluded. And, so far, there has been no attempt to localise the drama storyline to any significant degree.

Culture as Content: The series writers receive regular feedback from various listener associations, on the relevance of each episode to their community/daily lives and assist the development of the dramatic storyline and in identifying future issues that need to be addressed. The content of episodes is made as relevant as possible for a diversity of listeners – rural and urban, youth and adults.

Activities

ABC Ulwazi produces educational radio programmes that integrate drama content with societal structures to support and generate discussion.

The Body, Mind and Soul soap, and other formats have proved to be a rich source of information and activism. They focus on:

• Broadcasting effective educational radio programmes, with familiar characters in familiar situations speaking the language of the listeners, if not always the specific vernacular language.
• Training presenters both in the nature of the content of developmental programmes, and in how to maximise the impact of the content locally.
• Soliciting feedback through talk-shows after the broadcast of each episode
• Interacting with community and other organisations through the establishment of listeners associations.

This methodology has been used and refined to focus specifically on HIV/AIDS communication. It has involved the production of radio material around current and most pressing HIV/ AIDS messages, which are usually identified in consultation with HIV/ AIDS research organisations. Radio presenters and production staff of participating community radio stations are invited to training sessions around the themes and messages of the series, which include how to maximise the impact and relevance of the program by drawing on resources in their communities and setting up local listener associations.

Listener associations are groups of about 8 to 12 people from the community that meet to discuss the weekly episode. They debate the relevance of each episode to their community/daily lives and help identify lessons. This is an interactive, community based communication strategy that moves away from the top down approach, and enhances rather than compromises the quality of the information communicated.

Outcomes

The 13 episodes of Body, Mind and Soul, each episode lasting 12 minutes, were first broadcast in 2004, and again in 2005, on a total of 60 community radio stations.

Following the series ABC Ulwazi partnered with CADRE to develop educational content and radio drama scripts highlighting the impact of HIV/AIDS on women and
girls. A 13-part radio drama called The Journey was researched, developed and produced, and broadcast nationally on community radio stations in English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Sotho.

The drama was accompanied by the development of listener associations in various communities, as well as the development of public service announcements. Key themes in the series were gender roles, domestic violence and abuse, living positively, and the psychological and emotional impact of HIV/AIDS on individuals and families.

Further projects included a 13-part radio drama series, Flowers from a Lizard, and a series of features entitled The Price of Love, and public service announcements funded by the Royal Netherlands Embassy. The overall objective of the intervention was to highlight the specific impact of HIV/AIDS on women and girls. The programmes were produced in five languages.

Feedback

There has been regular feedback from listener associations, talk shows and phone in programmes and from the radio stations themselves. In addition there has been an external evaluation.

The evaluation found that in most of the areas where the project had been broadcast it had been able to ignite a vibrant debate around HIV/AIDS. The project introduced and publicised a ‘winning formula’ by presenting the HIV/AIDS debate in a popular, easily understood format of radio drama supported by, in many cases, active listener associations.

Certain leading characters have become household names and ‘community heroes’ for the positive way they have dealt with their HIV status. Others are perceived as ‘bigots’. All in all the series appears to have given hope and confidence to listeners that there are ways of managing HIV/AIDS and tackling the stigma.

Evaluation

An external evaluation of Body, Mind and Soul was undertaken by Bosabosele Consulting led by Simon Kimani Ndungu and published in August 2005. The evaluation conducted interviews and focus group discussions with 10 community radio stations around the country.

The three areas of study were:

• The quality and impact of the drama series in tackling issues around HIV/AIDS
• The effectiveness of the training programme for broadcasters and production staff
• The influence and workings of the listener associations

The evaluation concludes that the series has great potential for replication and expansion, providing ABC Ulwazi overcomes resource constraints and find ways to continue the project.

Future Plans

Plans for a second series are under consideration. Some listener associations are still active.

Partners

Community Radio Stations, Centre for AIDS Development and Research (CADRE)

Donors

The US Presidential Emergency Plan for Aid Relief (PEPFAR); John Hopkins Health Education in South Africa (JHHESA); the Royal Netherlands Embassy.

Start Date

May 2004 to present

Sources

Busi Dlamini, Desiree Lebaea

Contact

Busi Dlamini
ABC Ulwazi
13th Floor Orion House, 49 Jorissen Street, Braamfontein 2001
Phone number: +27 11 339 2277

info@abculwazi.org.za or busi@abculwazi.org.za

www.abculwazi.org.za

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.