From SOUL BEAT AFRICA - where communication and media are central to AFRICA's social and economic development.
Subscribe to The Soul Beat: click here!
= = =
Please note: Access to the complete range of Soul Beat knowledge resources is open to all users, whether registered or not. We do, however, encourage registration. In the future, there will be features that are only available to those who register; for example, in order to tailor the information to you and your needs, registration will be required. To register, please click here.
= = =
This general issue of The Soul Beat contains summaries of programme experiences, strategic thinking documents, evaluations, materials, and events related to communication for development in Africa. This edition covers issues related to health and HIV/AIDS, the environment, information and communication technology (ICT) and media for development in Africa.
If you would like your organisation's communication work or research and resource documents to be featured on the Soul Beat Africa website and in the Soul Beat newsletters please contact the Editor - Anja Venth aventh@comminit.com
= = =
EXPERIENCES
1. PATH's Project on Married Adolescent Girls – Kenya
In October 2005 Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), in collaboration with Population Council, began implementing a project in the rural areas of Nyanza, Kenya to raise awareness about the risks associated with early marriage, promote voluntary counseling and testing for couples, and empower girls. PATH uses a variety of approaches including radio, theatre, transportation subsidies for voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) clients as well as mentoring programmes through married girls clubs.
Contact Irene Chami ichami@path.org
2. Xam Marsé – Senegal
Launched by Manobi in 2001, this project provides market information to Senegalese farmers, traders, hoteliers and others via internet and free, daily telephone SMS (short message service) messages. Meaning "know your market" in Wolof, Xam Marsé provides SMSs with real-time information on the prices and availability of fruit, vegetables, meat and poultry, available on any of Senegal's markets. Manobi introduced the service to increase access of producers to information that would allow them to make better decisions about sales and purchases.
Contact Daniel Annerose daniel.annerose@manobi.net
3. Water and Sanitation Campaign - Ghana
This initiative was a 3-day campaign that promoted clean water, sanitation and hygiene through music in the Northern Region of Ghana. From February 26-28 2007, musician Rocky Dawuni, Samini (formerly Batman) and other well-known Ghanaian musicians urged communities to drink clean water and practice good sanitation and hygiene. The programme was coordinated by the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate, Ghana Health Service and the non-governmental organisation Africa Live!, with support from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
Contact Allison Hickling ahickling@unicef.org
4. Desert Voices – Ethiopia and Sudan
Launched by Panos London, an international non-governmental organisation, this project is a collection of stories and testimonies of how climate change affects individual lives in Ethiopia and Sudan. Compiled and published online, the radio and print testimonies of individuals, produced by journalists, aim to show the long term impact of desertification for the African region. Published for the World Day to Combat Desertification on June 17 2007, the collection looks beyond the environmental impact of desertification and highlights its wide-ranging consequences, from migration in search of employment, increased conflict over resources, to changes in tradition and in the roles of women.
Contact Risha Chande isha.chande@panos.org.ukM OR media@panos.org.uk
5. HakiElimu Public Engagement Programme - Tanzania
This is a programme of HakiElimu, a Tanzanian non-profit organisation established in 2001 to enable communities, including parents, teachers, and students, to transform schools and influence decision-making by facilitating their participation in school and community governance in four districts of Tanzania. The Public Engagement Programme was designed to contribute towards creating and sustaining a national movement for social and educational change by stimulating broad public engagement, information sharing, dialogue, membership development, and networking throughout Tanzania. The programme included murals, print publication, electronic media, and public forums.
Contact info@hakielimu.org
6. Personal Hygiene and Sanitation Education (PHASE) - Global
The United-States-based pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) initiated PHASE in 1998 after identifying personal hygiene and sanitation as a health education priority. The programme aims to contribute to the reduction of child mortality and the provision of water and sanitation facilities in various countries around the world. By working closely in partnership with non-government organisations (NGOs) such as AMREF (African Medical and Research Foundation), Save The Children, and Plan International, as well as Ministries of Health and Education, PHASE has developed a low-cost educational hand-washing programme that is intended to teach children how to reduce the spread of germs. The PHASE curriculum has a strong focus on what children and communities can do collectively to make their lives and surroundings healthier.
Contact AMREF info@amrefhq.org
STRATEGIC THINKING
7. Making Poverty the Story - Time to Involve the Media in Poverty Reduction
by Angela Wood and Jon Barnes from Panos London
This report is the culmination of Raising Debate, a three-year pilot project on media and poverty reduction in six countries. It focuses on the role of media in poverty reduction through the media's ability to raise public awareness and debate and to shift public and political opinion, with the possible result of policy change. The report makes a case for stronger media involvement on poverty reduction and asks for recognition and support of high quality public interest journalism that plays a role in coverage relevant to poverty reduction. According to the report, the media has boosted the potential for poverty reduction to be seen as a more newsworthy challenge.
8. Governance in Africa: The Role for Information and Communication Technologies
African Development Bank, Economic Research Papers, No. 65
This paper explores the challenges of good governance in Africa and focuses on the role that ICTs can play in improving governance. Written by the founder of the Knowledge Network, a futures think-tank and strategy consulting firm, it discusses issues and the obstacles affecting the adoption of ICTs, examples of how ICTs can be used and are being used to improve governance, and offers some guiding principles and policies for African countries.
9. Criteria and Indicators for Quality Journalism Training Institutions and Identifying Potential Centers of Excellence in Journalism Training in Africa
The WSIS Geneva Plan of Action called upon all stakeholders to "contribute to media development and capacity building", and UNESCO was designated the lead facilitator of the media component. It is with this mandate in mind that UNESCO launched this study to assess existing journalism training institutions in Africa, and to develop a strategy to build institutional excellence to offer quality training. The report maps the capacity and potential for excellence of almost one hundred journalism schools across Africa, highlighting the development challenges and opportunities of African journalism institutions and identifying specific areas for support from development partners. The report aims to provide a set of indicators and criteria for measuring the potential for institutional excellence that can be adapted for use in other parts of the world.
10. Community Involvement in Youth Reproductive Health and HIV Prevention
by Peggy Tipton, William Finger, and Kathleen Henry Shears from Interagency Youth Working Group and CARE/USA
According to this paper, projects working with youth are now turning to a more holistic approach that involves community members, in the belief that reproductive health (RH) and HIV outcomes for youth will be better and more sustainable. Though early research shows promise, questions remain about how to determine the added value and how to design, document, and evaluate interventions seeking to use community involvement to improve youth RH and HIV prevention. In introducing promising findings, the authors note the challenges of finding a common definition of "community" - geographical, shared characteristics, or shared interests - and the degree of involvement or participation. Another challenge is whether to measure youth RH behaviours or to measure increased community strength for more sustainable and long-term outcomes.
EVALUATIONS
11. Straight Talk Campaign in Uganda: Evaluation of the School Environment Programme
by the United-States-based NGO Horizons and the Uganda-based Straight Talk Foundation (STF) research teams
This report documents the impact of STF's School Environment Program (SEP). When interviewed, students in SEP schools did not notice significant changes as a result of their teachers being trained, aside from the formation of ST and YT clubs. Among the researchers' conclusions: SEP training may not have been intensive enough to be felt by the students. The researchers also recognised that STF was implementing this work among a "glut" of other HIV efforts in schools, so its impact was difficult to discern.
12. Diversity Matters, Even at a Distance: Evaluating the Impact of Computer-Mediated Communication on Civil Society Participation in the World Summit on the Information Society
This study explores the computer-mediated communication (CMC) practices of the trans-national civil society organisations involved in the United Nations sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Using both quantitative and qualitative data from an international survey and archival research, the study finds that e-mail lists are the primary CMC tools used within the sector, although attempts have been made to introduce more sophisticated applications to aid collaboration. Within the civil society sector the report finds strong evidence of a readiness to collaborate along several dimensions and that there is significant civil society participation in global policy networks, with numerous explicit linkages to epistemic communities.
13. Effects of an Entertainment-Education Radio Soap Opera on Family Planning and HIV/AIDS Prevention Behaviour in Tanzania
This paper offers an evaluation of the entertainment-education (E-E) radio soap opera introduced in Tanzania in 1993 called "Twende na Wakati" - which means "Let's Go with the Times" (implicitly, "let's control our lives"). The soap opera promoted the two interrelated health issues of family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention in an effort to help support the Government's national population policy. Evaluators found that the soap opera had strong behavioural effects on family planning adoption in that it increased listeners' self-efficacy regarding family planning adoption and influenced listeners to talk with their spouses and peers about contraception. A key finding was that the soap opera changed listeners' family planning behaviour specifically by stimulating interpersonal - peer-to-peer - communication about the subject.
MATERIALS
14. Ndizvo Zvandiri
This is a 30-minute film that aims to promote issues around Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission (PMTCT) as well as encourage disclosure of HIV status and male participation in reproductive health issues. "Ndizvo Zvandiri", which means "This is What I Am", tells the story of Miriam, who discovers that she is HIV positive when she goes to book for antenatal care. Intended to be representative of the challenges that many women in the country face, the film chronicles the gender power challenges she faces in disclosing her status to her husband and how the couple eventually join hands to protect the future of their unborn child.
15. Our Future: Sexuality and Life Skills Education for Young People
This book, the first in a series of three, forms part of the Government of Zambia's comprehensive strategy for sexual and reproductive health and HIV education for young people in and out of school. The book, designed for children in grades 4-5, aims to provide information about puberty, friendship, gender, sexuality, pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS and drug use.
16. Survival is the First Freedom: Applying Democracy & Governance Approaches to HIV/AIDS
This toolkit aims to provide a collection of tools for use in applying democracy and governance approaches to HIV/AIDS work. It is a compilation of the diverse expertise and experiences from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Pact and other development organisations. It was produced to assist efforts to scale up responses to the pandemic and increase access to prevention and care services through collaboration at individual, community and national levels. This toolkit is designed for use by donor organisations, civil society, government and the private sector.
EVENTS and TRAINING
16. Reproductive Health (RH) in Emergencies Conference 2008 (June 18-20 2007) - Kampala, Uganda
Hosted by Reproductive Health Access, Information and Services in Emergencies (RAISE), this conference aims to bring together a wide range of actors from the fields of RH in emergencies, reproductive health, humanitarian assistance and development to contribute to the expansion of comprehensive RH services in crisis settings.
17. The 3rd International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training (May 28-30 2008) - Accra, Ghana
This rotating event - hosted by a different African government every year - aims to support and reinforce the growing pan-African eLearning community. According to the organisers, the conference aims to meet the networking needs of the pan-African eLearning and distance education sector.
18. Policy Advocacy (Apr 21-May 02 2008)- Arusha, Tanzania
This course, offered by MS Training Centre for Development Cooperation, seeks to develop the capacities of development practitioners in policy advocacy work through deepening their understanding of the public policy making process and enhancing their capability to engage with this process at national, regional and global levels.
19. Health Education and Promotion Course (Mar 10-14 2008) - Nairobi, Kenya
This one-week course, run by the African Media And Research Foundation (AMREF), aims to provide opportunities for participants to develop a critical and informed understanding of health education and promotion issues. The course is intended for health and health related personnel including: nurses, doctors, pharmacists, clinical officers, community health workers, social/community development workers, occupational health personnel, project managers and project officers in health and health-related fields.
= = =
The Soul Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.
If you have not received the most recent edition of The Soul Beat and you are definitely subscribed, it may be that your mailbox is protected by spam filters. Please add soulbeat@comminit.com to your email address book, spam software whitelist, or mail system whitelist.
Please send material for The Soul Beat to the Editor - Anja Venth aventh@comminit.com
Click here to subscribe.
