WB Forums on Edutainment, Social Media and Development

Blogs

• WB Let's Talk Development, Community health workers and contraceptive access: Findings from Burundi (2025)

• WB Let's Talk Development, From clicks to care: Targeting social media to improve health in vulnerable communities (2025)

• WB Let's Talk Development, Improving school enrollment and learning through videos and mobiles: Experimental evidence from northern Nigeria (2023)

• WB Let's Talk Development, Combating regressive gender norms and violence against women through social media edutainment campaigns – Lessons from India (2022)

• HFPA WB forum (2), Preventing Violence Against Women and Girls Through Edutainment (2022)

• HFPA WB forum (1), Global Challenges Require Global Solutions: Innovative Partnerships between the Entertainment and Development Sectors (2022) - HFPA article about event main messages (here)

• WB Digital Development, Mobile-based solutions can strengthen human capital gains disrupted by COVID-19 in developing countries (2021) 

• WB Let's Talk Development, How to tame COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: Edutainment and lotteries? (2021)

• WB Voices, "Using Social Media to Change Norms at Scale" (2021)

• DIME blog, “Building Rigorous Evidence and Evaluation Capacity through Hands-On Collaboration” (2019)

• WB article, "Using Entertainment Media to Reach the SDGs" (2019)

• VoxDev (with Abhijit Banerjee and Eliana La Ferrara), “The entertaining way to behavioural change: Fighting HIV with MTV in Nigeria” (2018)

• World Bank Perspectives on Development blog “The newest weapon against HIV/AIDS in Africa? MTV” (2016)

World Bank coverage 

• • Econothon (interview): The Late with Nate Show (2019)

  • Presentation at WB Behavioral Science for Development: A Storytelling Event (2018)

  • PROFOR, Innovation and Action for Forests, “In Mexico, payments for ecosystem services benefit forests and communities” (2018)

  • Main WB website article and joint interview with Abhijit Banerjee (2017)

  • IMF-WB Spring Meetings (interview), Mission: #ItsPossible Facebook Live (2017)

Media Coverage 

• • NPR, “Watch The MTV Soap Opera that Is Secretly Teaching Sex Ed” (2017)

  • BBC Media Action, “The rise of edutainment: taking stock of the evidence” (2017)

  • W-Radio with Leonardo Kourchenko (interview), with Lorena Guille and Alejandro Balassa “Edutainment, educación y entretenimiento, nuevas formas de cambio” (2016)

  • The Hollywood Reporter, “MTV Shuga' Viewers Twice as Likely to Get Tested for HIV, World Bank Study in Nigeria Finds” (2016)

  • El Pais, “Su show favorito de televisión le puede salvar la vida” (2016)

  • Bloomberg TV, “Using Data, Entertainment to Combat HIV Stigma” (2015)