From SOUL BEAT AFRICA - where communication and media are central to AFRICA's social and economic development
In this issue of The Soul Beat:
* PROGRAMME EXPERIENCES on TV series for ethnic tolerance, citizenship clubs...
* EVALUATIONS of HIV/AIDS clubs, theatre for street children...
*Spotlight on VIDEO FESTIVAL to promote diversity...
* STRATEGIC THINKING on rural poverty campaign, putting culture first...
* POLL on messaging for MCP campaigns...
* MATERIALS on advocacy and women’s HIV/AIDS stories...
This issue of The Soul Beat contains a selection of programme experiences, evaluations, strategic thinking documents, and resource materials from the Soul Beat Africa website. The newsletter covers issues related to health and HIV/AIDS, youth, media for development, gender, and racial and ethnic tolerance.
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 soulbeat@comminit.com
To subscribe to The Soul Beat, click here or send an email to soulbeat@comminit.com with a subject of "subscribe".
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CALL FOR INFORMATION RELATED TO XENOPHOBIA AND ETHNIC AND RACIAL CONFLICT IN AFRICA
Soul Beat Africa is looking for communication-related projects, research documents, and resource materials that deal with combating xenophobia, ethnic and racial intolerance, and any discrimination related to identity. Please send your information to soulbeat@comminit.com
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PROGRAMME EXPERIENCES
1. Women's Arts Institute Africa (wAi Africa) - Africa
This is an African organisation which was started in 2006 in Ghana to encourage women in the arts to look for solutions to societal problems using the arts. The organisation seeks to mobilise women to create platforms for business and academic dialogues on the arts, generate practical knowledge, integrate the arts into government policies, and advocate for the use of the arts as a development tool in Africa. This is done through a wide range of activities including programmes, consultancies, policy implementation, mobilisation, advocacy, provision of services, activism, and campaigning.
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/293191/304
Contact Women's Arts Institute Africa info@waiafrica.org OR whyafrica@gmail.com
2. The Team Television Series - Kenya
Launched in May 2009, The Team is an edutainment television series produced by the Media Focus on Africa Foundation and Search for Common Ground. Initiated in response to post-election violence in 2008, the series is designed to promote understanding and dialogue amongst different sectors of Kenyan society. The storyline of The Team centres on a Kenyan soccer club whose members must learn to deal with their tribal, ethnic, social, and economic divisions. It tells the stories of seven young Kenyan footballers from different tribes who must overcome their mutual distrust.
Contact Deborah Jones cgpinfo@sfcg.org OR Susan Koscis skoscis@sfcg.org OR Mburugu Gikunda mburugu@mediafocusonafrica.org OR Marten Schoonman info@mediafocusonafrica.org
3. African Forum for Media Development (AFMD) - Africa
This is an international organisation that works to provide a collective voice for non-governmental organisations involved in the development of the media in Africa. Established in 2008, AFMD is part of the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD), a series of regional forums that have been established in Asia-Pacific, Eurasia, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), as well as in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Contact Bettina Peters director@mediagfmd.org OR Gabriel Baglo gabriel.baglo@ifjafrique.org
4. Voices of Africa - Africa
Established in 2007, the Voices of Africa Project is an initiative by the Africa Interactive Media Foundation that provides a web and mobile phone-based outlet for African journalists to engage in discussions about their continent and to report on events in their countries. The objective of the project is to help talented Africans build a career in media, using currently available technologies to stimulate citizen journalism that can promote democracy and good governance in Africa. In each African country, young men and women are identified and trained in the use of high-technology mobile phones equipped with software to permit direct uploads of photos, texts, and videos to a Skoeps server from where they are transferred to the Voices of Africa website for publication.
Contact Voices of Africa info@africa-interactive.net
5. Urungano (Generation) - Rwanda
This youth radio programme, launched by Search for Common Grounds (SFCG) in Rwanda in 2008, is designed to give young people, especially girls, a platform to explore and discuss the challenges and conflicts they face within their society. Produced in the national language Kinyarwandan, the youth magazine show is hosted by a team of 4 girls under the age of 18 who discuss issues such as rapid urbanisation, street children, reconciliation, and underage marriage. Each week, the hosts of the show conduct all the interviews as well as
plan and lead the show.
Contact Frances Fortune ffortune@sfcg.org OR Chris Plutte cplutte@sfcg.org
6. Skurakaa 2 (Partners 2) Project - Egypt
Initiated in 2008 by Internews Network, Skurakaa 2 (Partners 2) is a youth and media project that involves the establishment of citizenship clubs in universities across Egypt who are trained to use media to investigate and challenge social issues such as unemployment, sexual harassment, education, and overpopulation. Before beginning the media production training, the clubs teach students about the importance of civic involvement in their communities. The students in the clubs are then trained in newspaper, radio and television production.
Contact Felicia Montgomery fmontgomery@internews.org
7. Dialogue Among Civilisations - South Africa
Art for Humanity’s project, "Dialogue among Civilisations", is an arts initiative which seeks to address racism, xenophobia, and the plight of refugees. The project involves collaboration between artists and poets from Africa and from countries that participated in the 2006 Soccer World Cup. Participants are invited to create work on the theme of identity, land, object, and belief. A catalogue based on the project will be published in time for the project launch in March 2010, South Africa Human Rights Day, and the work will be highlighted during a conference and public showings leading up to the world Cup 2010.
Contact Jan Jordaan JanJ@dut.ac.za OR afh@dut.ac.za
EVALUATIONS
8. Malawi Teacher Training Activity: HIV and AIDS School Club Initiative (HASCI) Assessment Report
This report, published by Miske Witt and Associates and the American Institutes for Research, aims to provide a qualitative assessment of the implementation of the HIV and AIDS School Club Initiative's (HASCI) Mphanvu Kwa Achinyamata (Power to the Youth, or MKA) clubs in two pilot districts of Malawi to provide information for decision-making regarding implementation, progress and achievements, and possible next phases. The assessment found that the HASCI pilot schools have shown significant progress in a number of areas and documents these key findings together with lessons learned and recommendations for each finding.
9. Evaluation of the African Youth Alliance (AYA) Program in Tanzania: Impact on Sexual and Reproductive Health Behavior Among Young People
This report is an evaluation of the African Youth Alliance (AYA), an organisation established by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to be a collaborative, and comprehensive prevention programme for improving adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) among young people age 10–24 in Botswana, Ghana, Tanzania, and Uganda. Implemented between 2000 and 2006, the AYA programme strategy focused on implementing and scaling up a defined set of integrated and comprehensive ASRH interventions using existing local institutions. This report presents the results of the Tanzania evaluation. The research found that AYA’s integrated programme had a substantial impact on most of the desired outcomes, especially among female youths.
10. Child Participation in Awareness Raising Through Theatre
By John Muiruri
This report, published by the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), details the successes of the Dagoretti Children in Need project which works to improve the physical and psychological health, living conditions, and skills of children and adolescents in vulnerable circumstances. The project has, in the last four years, worked with the community of Dagoretti slum to establish a system for rehabilitating, re-socialising, and reintegrating street children in the community. The report focuses on the project's use of theatre for rehabilitation, outlining AMREF's "theatre-like-home" approach and the impact this approach has had on vulnerable children.
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PLURAL+ Festival
In collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and other international partners, the United Nations Alliance of Citizens is launching a youth video festival exploring themes related to migration and diversity. Young people between the ages of 9-25 are invited to submit short videos on their thoughts, experiences, opinions, questions and suggestions on these issues and how to promote harmonious yet diverse societies. Submissions will be accepted from June 1 to September 30 2009. Click here for more information.
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STRATEGIC THINKING
11. What We've Learned: Lessons From a Communications Campaign for South Africa's Rural Poor
This report, published by The Atlantic Philanthropies, describes the Farm Life Project in South Africa, a multipronged communications campaign that Atlantic Philanthropies and more than a dozen grantee organisations pursued from 2004 to 2006 to raise awareness of the plight of the rural poor in the changing economy. The campaign sought to inform government officials, media, and the general public about the plight of farm dwellers. This report describes the planning and execution of the campaign, identifies the continuing challenges and work needed in the area of rural poverty, and encourages a discussion about potential policy solutions. In particular, the campaign revealed a number of lessons that may be useful to funders and advocates around the world interested in using communications to support advocacy campaigns for social change.
12. Putting Culture First: Commonwealth Perspectives on Culture and Development
By Mark Nowottny
This document is the product of consultation with representatives from government, civil society, and the culture and development sectors across the Commonwealth, carried out between February and October 2008. The report took as its starting point the proposition that culture is a fundamental component of sustainable development. The report recommends that government, civil society, and donors should incorporate a cultural perspective into their approaches to development, and that this commitment should be backed up by resources.
13. GROOTS Kenya
By Awino Okech
Published as part of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)'s Building Feminist Movements and Organisations (BFEMO) initiative, this paper describes Grassroots Organizations Operating Together in Sisterhood (GROOTS) Kenya, which is a member network of GROOTS International. This network of self-help groups works to strengthen the role of grassroots women in community development by serving as a platform for grassroots women's groups and individuals to: come together, to share their ideas/experiences, to network, and to find avenues to directly participate in decision making, planning, and implementation of issues that affect them. This case study provides a description of GROOTS Kenya, followed by an analysis of GROOTS Kenya based on ongoing theoretical and activist debates around feminist organisations and movements, and their functions.
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PLEASE VOTE IN THE SOUL BEAT AFRICA HIV/AIDS POLL::
Which approach do you believe is best when developing messages for campaigns dealing with multiple concurrent partnerships (MCP)?
Options:
*encourage NO partnerships outside of marriage/long term partnerships (1)
*encourage partner reduction since it is considered unrealistic to expect exclusivity given the socio-economic environment in Southern Africa (2)
*encourage people to reduce risk within these partnerships by eg. using condoms at all times (3)
*a combination of (1) and (3)
*a combination of (2) and (3)
To vote and send comments go to the HIV/AIDS theme site and see the Top Right side of the page.
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MATERIALS
14. Advocacy in Action: A Guide to Influencing Decision-making In Namibia
By Dianne Hubbard and Delia Ramsbotham
This is a manual designed primarily for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and grassroots-based groups who are interested in increasing their advocacy skills. It contains concrete, practical information about advocacy strategies such as petitions, press conferences, public demonstrations, and letter-writing campaigns, as well as detailed information on government structures and parliamentary procedures - and how to influence decision-making bodies and processes. It also includes actual case studies of advocacy efforts in Namibia.
15. "Not Yet Rain" Documentary Film
Not Yet Rain is a 22-minute short film by Lisa Russell, produced in association with international health organisation Ipas, which explores abortion in Ethiopia through the voices of women who have faced the challenge of finding safe care. Through their stories, the documentary highlights the important role that safe abortion care plays in the overall health of women and their families. The film explains ways that additional training for health workers and increased availability of care could save countless women’s lives in Ethiopia and around the world.
16. Women Tell Their Stories in the Fight Against AIDS
This book introduces the stories of six women who, through education and empowerment, developed the intention to become a force in the fight against AIDS. These women participated in the Advancing Women's Leadership and Advocacy for AIDS Action programme, an initiative that aims to equip and empower a growing cadre of women worldwide with the knowledge and skills to advance the global response to AIDS.
17. Empowering Messages - What You Should Know: Strategic Communication and Gender-based Violence
This document contains guidelines designed to be a comprehensive resource specifically addressing the development and implementation of communication for issues related to gender-based violence. It includes guidelines on how to develop a communication strategy, and looks at how to better understand the intended audience and approach monitoring and evaluation.
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