This project draws on the medium of radio to provide children, who are all directly or indirectly affected by HIV in their communities, with the opportunity to depict their lives, insights, and concerns. The strategy involves using information and communication technology (ICT) to equip children with useful life skills and to give voice to their experiences, as well as to enable their stories and interests to inform and possibly shape the attitudes and behaviours of listeners.


Organisers stress the centrality of children’s participation in the development and implementation of this project, explaining that, "In the context of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, participation entails the act of encouraging and enabling children to make their views known on the issues that affect them. Providing children with opportunities to produce their own media is one of the most powerful ways in which we can give effect to this right."


Grounded in such principles and practice of participatory approaches, the project began in 2005 by bringing together a group of 9- to 14-year-old children who attend Okhayeni Primary School. Having selected their own name for their work ("Abaqophi basOkhayeni Abaqinile" in the Zulu language), over a period of 6 months the group wrote and illustrated books about their own lives. The process enabled the children to develop oral history skills and to explore personal narratives from which they could draw when making their radio programmes. They subsequently participated in a radio training workshop in which they learned about interviewing, sound, and technical radio production skills (including the use of recording equipment and the elements of producing radio programmes). They then recorded their personal radio narratives, which last approximately 5 minutes. For example, in "Ukuthula nezinto / Questionable silences" 12-year-old Nobuhle, who lives in a community hard hit by AIDS, wonders why adults don't tell children when someone has HIV.


Following this initial process, organisers have continued to develop children's radio and the capacity of child reporters by repeating a similar process with new groups of Okhayeni learners. They also continue to provide ongoing additional radio training to the original participants. The programmes they have produced are aired by broadcast partner Maputaland Community Radio, as well as by other interested stations. In addition, some of the programmes are available in audio or as flash files with photographs and translation into English. To download the programmes, or to read their transcripts, click here .

Children, HIV/AIDS.

According to organisers, children who grow up in the rural expanse of Ingwavuma, in the far north-eastern corner of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, experience extensive poverty, summer-time malaria risk, a legacy of under-resourced or absent service provision, and a burgeoning HIV epidemic.

Organisers explain that not all children who participate in the Okhayeni Strong Recorders project are directly affected by AIDS, but all are affected by virtue of the fact that they live in a neighbourhood where antenatal HIV prevalence is at least 35%.

The project has reportedly had a number of positive outcomes. These include:

• the improvement in the confidence of some of the most troubled children involved in the project, and much enthusiasm and pride on the part of all the children who participated;
• the building of participants' skills in story-telling and interviewing techniques, a range of art techniques, and in the production of radio recordings;
• the demonstration of how critical it is that children's perspectives be made accessible to adults;
• the spurring of initiatives on the part of the school to introduce more participatory methods into the classroom and into after-school club activities;
• the encouragement of parents and caregivers by the school to come forward with information about children who are sick, or who are experiencing other difficult circumstances at home so that the school can better support them; and
• the development of a relationship between children and their school, and between children and support organisation Zisize, that organisers claim did not previously exist with such depth or trust on the part of the children.

In August 2007, an updated CD-ROM was released; it includes copies of a selection of the children’s radio diaries, including translated audio-visual versions. (Programmes are available for public non-profit use, provided that the source and copyright is acknowledged; these programmes, however, may not be edited - click here for a media guide to use of the programmes, in PDF format). To request a copy of the CD-ROM, send an email to: helen.meintjes@uct.ac.za