Population Media Center’s radio serial drama in Sudan went on the air November 22, 2004 after 2 years of preparation work. Titled Ashreat Al Amal (“Sails of Hope”), the Arabic language program deals with reproductive health issues. It will air for approximately 18 months (there are 150 episodes) over Khartoum Radio. The project is supported by a grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

The program deals with the major themes of HIV/AIDS education and the importance of educating women as a means to a better life, and the minor themes of female circumcision, negative consequences of too much drinking and gambling, and pre-natal care.

Through the characters of Hamid and Jabir, the program addresses the importance of reducing stigma of people living with HIV/AIDS and shows how one can interact with those who have AIDS. Hamid (a transitional character) is HIV positive and is refused a job by Jabir. Hamid’s wife’s former husband, Al Dai (another transitional character), comes to take his children away and declares that it is not safe for kids to live with someone who has AIDS. Later in the program, we will see that Jabir’s other evil-doings – stealing money, lying, blackmailing – lead to his assassination. Al Dai will grow to learn to accept people living with HIV/AIDS.

Through the character of Awatif, the program will address the issue of family planning and pre-natal care. Awatif, Hassan’s wife, suffers from acute anemia resulting from non-birth spacing, and repeated, prolonged bleeding from the births of her many children. She is in the process of delivering another child and encountering complications in delivery because she had become so run-down with running the household and having an office job while pregnant. After recovering from her terrible, but not lethal childbirth, Awatif slowly comes to realize that it is hard to pay the school fees for all of her children. Her former husband convinces her to take him back (he had left her to pursue another woman), but she agrees only if he will agree to use condoms. Hassan refuses. Awatif and Hassan will fight over this, but eventually Awatif will overcome.

Population Media Center is a non-profit, non-governmental organization dedicated to using media to aid the stabilization of human population numbers at a level that can be sustained by the world’s natural resources and to lessen the impact of humanity on the earth’s environment. Its work emphasizes education on the benefits of small families, elevation of women’s status, promotion of gender equity and encouragement in the use of effective family planning methods.

Shelburne, VT — Population Media Center-West Africa (PMC) began airing its radio serial drama Cesiri Tono (”All the Rewards of Courage and Hard Work”) on Thursday, November 11, 2004 over the Africa Learning Channel.

Continue Reading »

Ethiopian Reporter June 16, 2004

Mr. William Ryerson, founder and President of PMC, has a 30-year history of working in the field of reproductive health, including 15 years of experience in adopting the Sabido Methodology for behavior change communication to various cultural settings worldwide. He has also been involved in the design of research to measure the effects of such projects in a number of countries, one of which has led to a series of publications regarding a serialized radio drama in Tanzania and its effects on HIV/AIDS avoidance and family planning use. Mr. Ryerson was recently in Addis Ababa to be present at the second anniversary of the launching of PMC-Ethiopia Entertainment Education Radio serial that dramas that was observed last Saturday. Melese Telahoun of The Reporter who caught up with Mr. Ryerson posed a number of questions to him on PMC’s achievements on the international level in general and in Ethiopia in particular. Excerpts:

Continue Reading »

Perspectives in Health Magazine
The Magazine of the Pan American Health Organization
Volume 8, Number 2, 2003

by Paula Andaló

Latin America’s telenovelas have long captivated TV audiences with their overwrought stories of love and betrayal, sin and punishment, and triumph over adversity. But for public health advocates, they also are an ideal medium for transmitting positive messages about healthier living.

Read the full article,
“Love, Tears, Betrayal…and Health Messages.”

Shelburne, Vermont, USA– In response to problems related to the exploitation of children in western Africa, Population Media Center (PMC) is launching a new behavior change communication project that will support the protection of children, promote reproductive health, and avoidance of HIV/AIDS in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will fund the new $1.3 million two-year project that will include six months of formative research and training and eighteen months of production and broadcast of a serial radio drama using the Sabido methodology for behavior change (accompanied by monitoring and evaluation research).

The radio program will address issues related to child protection, trafficking of children across international borders and the link between this problem and poverty-inducing factors such as unplanned childbearing. The program will also confront underlying issues (such as insufficient family income) that put children at risk of exploitative labor situations. Often, children or their parents believe that offers of employment (such as on cocoa plantations) for their children will result in added income to the family, while in reality, such offers sometimes lead to long hours of hard labor with little or no pay, and frequent beatings or other physical abuse.

Population Media Center (PMC) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that works worldwide with the broadcast media, educating people about the benefits of small families; promoting the protection of children from exploitation, elevating the status of women; promoting the use of effective family planning methods; and motivating behavior change for the avoidance of HIV/AIDS.

The U.S. Agency for International Development administers the U.S. foreign assistance program providing economic and humanitarian assistance in more than 80 countries worldwide.

On September 10, 2003, Population Media Center was featured in The Burlington Free Press.

Read the article, “Reality Radio: Ethiopia.”

Johannesburg, South Africa – People don’t change behavior when they’re told how to act. Rather, people are likely to listen when they are presented with accurate information that depicts a situation they can relate to and touches their heart. Life-like radio dramas are one way to effectively reach people and influence positive behavior change, discovered workshop participants from radio stations and health organizations from 8 African countries last week.

Radio can influence behavior when programs include social content. Entertainment-education, radio programming and HIV/AIDS prevention were the main topics discussed during a UNFPA training workshop organized by the Culture, Gender and Human Rights branch. Last week, UNFPA, The United Nations Population Fund, in collaboration with Population Media Center, launched a weeklong training workshop for local FM radio stations and non-governmental, reproductive health service organizations from Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, South Africa, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Namibia.

The workshop on entertainment-education strategies and HIV/AIDS is part of the project Strengthened Partnerships among Local FM and Community Radio Networks and Reproductive Health Agencies on HIV/AIDS. Participants were selected based on on-going collaboration with the UNFPA country programmes, and a needs assessment questionnaire that was distributed to radio stations and NGOs in 12 sub-Saharan African countries with high rates of HIV infection. A similar pilot workshop will be held in Asia in May.

Communication strategies such as the Sabido methodology for behavior change, radio drama script writing, social merchandizing and audience research and monitoring as well as issues related to gender sensitivity, HIV/AIDS research, and discrimination, were also discussed.

Also present at the workshop were representatives from UNAIDS, One World Radio, Free Play Radio, South Africa’s Department of Communications, Love Life, Soul City, the Reproductive Health Research Unit, the HIV Paranatal Unit, ABC Ulwazi, and AMARC, all of whom shared information through presentations and lively debates. As a result of these exchanges, participants expanded their knowledge and their networks.

The aim of the project is to develop effective, compelling and culturally relevant communications on HIV/AIDS by strengthening partnerships among local FM radio networks and health and education, youth and women community-based organizations. The project is funded through UNAIDS and UNFPA. Co-implementing agencies are UNFPA and Population Media Center.

Population Media Center, Inc. (PMC) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that works worldwide with the broadcast media to motivate people to achieve small family norms through family planning; to take effective measures to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, such as AIDS; and to respect equal rights for women. PMC is based in the United States.
UNFPA extends assistance to developing countries, countries with economies in transition and other countries at their request to help them address reproductive health and population issues and raises awareness of these issues in all countries, as it has since its inception.
PMC provides the technical assistance for the curriculum, inventory, needs assessment and training of radio stations for the project. UNFPA Culture, Gender and Human Rights Branch developed the project concept and proposal; it also coordinates inputs from UNFPA Country Offices in identification of countries, radio stations, health agencies and personnel.

By the end of the week, participants had committed plans to enhance their own radio programmes and the need for entertaining, accurate and culturally relevant programming to address HIV/AIDS.

One South African participant said, “Recognize you always need to learn from others. The media has power. So recognize and accept it. Recognize that people like to see themselves reflected back at them. They want characters to relate to.” She added, “In order to change a society, you need to change its ideas about itself. You need to target preconceived notions and stereotypes about gender, class and race. You need to reflect that community back to itself, so that they can see not so much their problems but rather the things that need to be rectified in their society.”

Shelburne, VT– In a country where infection rates are soaring, three popular television programs may prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. The United Nations Development Program-Swaziland has asked Population Media Center (PMC) to work with three television shows, Swazi View, Coca Cola What’s Up?, and the evening news, to build their capacity for entertainment-education with regard to reproductive health issues.

Continue Reading »

Shelburne, VT, - September 12, 2002 – It is no accident that for 25 years soap operas have been a vehicle for social change around the world. To mark the 25th anniversary of promoting social change by broadcasting hugely popular television and radio serials, Miguel Sabido and David Poindexter, of the Population Media Center (PMC), reunited in Mexico City last week in celebration of past achievements through their programs in countries such as Mexico, Tanzania, and India. Sabido and Poindexter also met to discuss works in progress, including countries throughout Africa. The reunion included other big names in the field of pro-social entertainment, such as Population Media Center President William Ryerson, Michael Cody of the Norman Lear Center, and World Entertainment Education Director Sergio Alarcon.

Poindexter first met Sabido in 1977. Sabido, who was Vice President of Research at Televisa at the time, was giving a lecture on telenovelas (Mexican soap operas) and their potential for creating social change. The meeting was to mark the beginning of the pair’s crusade against overpopulation, AIDS, and low status of women. Sabido’s first telenovela promoting family planning in Mexico, Acompañame, is credited with increasing calls to Mexico’s family planning information center (CONAPO) from zero to an average of 500 a month, increasing contraceptive sales by 23 percent in one year, increasing family planning clinic enrollment by 33 percent, and encouraging over 2,000 women to register as volunteer workers in the family planning program.

Currently, the two PMC leaders are focusing their efforts on various African countries. Upcoming activity is scheduled in Swaziland, Mali, Kenya, Sudan, and Nigeria—to name a few. Two radio serials created by scriptwriters from the National Theater of Ethiopia and the University of Addis Ababa are currently on the air in Ethiopia, where there are estimated to be over three million HIV/AIDS carriers. Poindexter feels that “as a result of these broadcasts, in a few years we will see enormous positive change in Ethiopia.”

Rather than simply informing people about HIV or AIDS through direct messages, role modeling in popular soap operas has and is moving audiences to change patterns of behavior in pro-social ways. With twenty-five years of success to their credit Sabido and Poindexter are continuing their work through PMC in countries around the world.

Population Media Center-Ethiopia (PMC) will launch a research-based radio serial drama designed to address Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS issues in Ethiopia on June 1, 2002 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is a unique program, the first of its kind ever to be carried out in the country.

Continue Reading »