In "interactive radio instruction," broadcast lessons are scripted so that listeners feel as if they are interacting with the radio teachers. EDC has been working in partnership with the Zambian Ministry of Education's Educational Broadcasting Service (EBS), churches, NGOs and local community groups to use this method to meet the desperate and growing needs of AIDS orphans. EBS trains "mentors" to manage the daily instruction, and the communities identify and support these mentors and their centers. The radio helps to "teach" children basic skills, and communities are engaged to manage the learning process at local centers. The radio programmes provide children with 30 minutes of basic mathematics and language instruction each day that is based on the school curriculum, while the interactive nature of the programme models various pedagogical strategies and classroom activities to help strengthen the mentors' teaching skills. Each daily programme also carries a short segment of life skills education (health, nutrition and basic hygiene) and addresses values that children would otherwise have received from their parents and teachers.

HIV/AIDS, Children, Education.

An estimated 800,000 to one million Zambian children are currently out of school, a major proportion of whom are children orphaned by HIV/AIDS. In rural areas, many children are constrained by distance and poverty, but attrition among the teaching force as a result of AIDS-related illness and death has made the situation considerably worse. Community schools have mushroomed in the last year, but they still only reach about 50,000 children, only about 5% of whom are orphans, according to the Zambia Open and Community Schools Secretariat. Thus the educational system is simply not able to handle a problem of this magnitude. The Ministry of Education and the community schools have expressed support for a programme they perceive can also address problems of poor quality in the conventional classrooms. Communities are eager to be included in the pilot that is presently running in three regions of Zambia with financial support from USAID/Lusaka and other donors.