Key informant interviews: with mental health service users, drama group leaders, village heads attending project activities, clinic nurses and the area/district Headmen. Stakeholders from various organizations (e.g. nurses, faith healers, traditional healers and local government officers). Semi-structured interviews would be conducted with people who participated in the Z Factor public engagement project. Convenience sampling, focusing on those available and willing to be interviewed, will be used to select participants.
Though viewed as a form of entertainment, theatrical activities and performances are regarded as informal ways by which the quality of lives of people can be enriched. When it comes to visual entertainment, we all know that local dramas are the best.
The main themes of the youth campaign, which was launched during August and September 1997, were self- respect and self-control. These were expressed in three slogans, which were repeated in all materials and activities, in both English and native languages: "Have self-control," "Value your body" and "Respect yourself." All campaign materials and activities were designed to reinforce a single set of messages, emphasizing the consequences of unprotected sex; negotiation skills; discussion with friends, family and providers; and safer sexual behaviors. Young people helped design appealing materials and relevant messages, and local management committees helped plan and execute activities at each site.
To increase the reach and impact of the campaign, the launch events, radio program and dramas used an entertainment-education strategy. This strategy, which inserts educational content into entertainment media, has proven effective in disseminating development and health messages around the world. It attracts and holds the attention of large audiences, provides role models for social learning and generates an emotional response that can heighten the impact of messages.24 It is a proven and potent strategy for young people, who enjoy mass media entertainment but frequently receive misleading messages about sex from the media.25 In Tanzania, for example, a radio soap opera prompted behavioral changes to prevent HIV by increasing audience members' perceptions that they were at risk, their belief in their ability to prevent the disease, discussion with peers and modeling of characters' behavior.26
Significantly higher proportions of youths in campaign than in comparison sites were exposed to each campaign component; nevertheless, exposure levels to some components were substantial in comparison sites (Figure 1). Two frequent problems for experimental research designs in mass media campaigns may explain this finding. First, the posters, radio program and leaflets were available in comparison sites and had some impact on young people there. Second, if respondents were unable to distinguish between campaign and similar noncampaign activities, the follow-up survey may have measured exposure to dramas and peer educators sponsored by programs other than the youth campaign. The inclusion of noncampaign activities presumably boosted exposure levels by roughly equal amounts in campaign and comparison areas. Because of the considerable exposure levels in some comparison sites, all analyses include the comparison as well as campaign sites.
Ninety-seven percent of respondents in campaign areas were exposed to the campaign. Posters and launch day events reached the largest proportions of young people (92% and 87%, respectively), followed by the leaflets (70%) and dramas (46%). The hot line reached the smallest share of the target audience (7%). However, the likelihood of respondents' exposure to each component varied according to the youths' characteristics.
While gender and urban-rural residence also were related to campaign exposure, the direction of the association varied for different materials and activities. Some components reached a greater proportion of women than men (posters, pamphlets and the radio program), while others reached a higher fraction of men (dramas, newsletter and peer educators ). Similarly, launch events, youth dramas, Straight Talk and the peer educators had their greatest reach in rural campaign sites, while leaflets, the radio program and the hot line reached a higher proportion of urban than rural youth.
High levels of campaign exposure and message recall were due to the appeal of the campaign components. This appeal, in turn, resulted from young people's participation in every aspect of designing and implementing campaign materials and activities. The entertainment-education strategy drew large audiences to launch events, but was not as successful (in terms of either exposure or impact) for the radio program. Language problems may explain the discrepancy: Rural youths prefer radio broadcasts in Shona and Ndebele rather than in English. Greater use of local languages in all components of the campaign might have increased its reach. (ZNFPC continued to air the radio show after the campaign ended, adding broadcasts in local languages and on other radio stations to reach rural youths.)
The use of multiple channels of communication contributed to the campaign's impact. The evaluation confirms a clear dose-response relationship between exposure and impact: The more materials and activities young people were exposed to, the more actions they took in response. Combining mass media and community events may have been particularly effective. An evaluation of the Safer Sex Campaign for young people in Uganda found that its featured radio program was most influential in districts that added local activities such as bicycle rallies and drama contests.34 Likewise, a comparison of four operations research projects in Sub-Saharan Africa found that the most effective adolescent sexual health campaigns combined mass media with interpersonal communication.35 In the Zimbabwe campaign, as elsewhere, local events ensured that messages were expressed in young people's own languages, in familiar contexts and with the endorsement of respected local figures. This finding confirms that mass media and interpersonal communication channels may play complementary roles in encouraging behavior change.36
One of the campaign's greatest accomplishments was building support, in the community and within the health care system, for reproductive health interventions directed at young people. It achieved this by decentralizing management to local committees that included representatives from local government, religious, educational, health and business groups; by designing activities to reach a secondary audience of family, friends and teachers, and to prompt discussion of reproductive health issues; by training providers to overcome entrenched biases against offering reproductive health information and services to young people; and by involving providers in campaign preparations and launches.
The International African Library is a major monograph series from the International African Institute. Theoretically informed ethnographies, and studies of social relations 'on the ground' which are sensitive to local cultural forms, have long been central to the Institute's publications programme. The IAL maintains this strength and extends it into new areas of contemporary concern, both practical and intellectual. It includes works focused on the linkages between local, national and global levels of society; writings on political economy and power; studies at the interface of the socio-cultural and the environmental; analyses of the roles of religion, cosmology and ritual in social organisation; and historical studies, especially those of a social, cultural or interdisciplinary character.
The Team in Zimbabwe is a television series that uses the theme of football to tackle issues such as ethnic and socio-economic differences, intergenerational relations, gender equality and the power dynamics between young men and women, and the importance of unity and working together to succeed at the individual, family, community, and national levels. The series is a local adaptation of a multi-national television drama initiative being undertaken by Search for Common Ground, which is designed to use sport as a unifier to transform social attitudes and diminish violent behaviour in countries dealing with deeply rooted conflict in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The drama is complemented by community outreach.
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