Below is a link to an interview with Ann DeMarle from Emergent Media Center. PMC is working with Emergent Media Center and UNFPA to create an electronic game for adolescent boys aimed at preventing violence against women.

What do you want people to know about the project?

Ann: My answer to that is two-fold. One, violence against women is a huge global problem; that’s the most important thing for people to know. Secondly, we’re using a medium,games, that has been labeled as promoting violence, and we’re taking it and applying it in the opposite direction, to create behavior changes to end violence. It’s not as easy to accomplish as I wish it would be.

For full article, visit:
http://www.canow.org/canoworg/2009/10/

Bill Ryerson was interviewed on Prime Time Radio, October 20, 2009. Below is a summary of the interview. If you would like to listen to the interview, please visit http://www.prx.org/pieces/41170-population-media-center

Do medical dramas make you wish you’d become a doctor? Does that cheating spouse make you think you could get away with it, too? The Population Media Center, based in Vermont, has higher stakes for its shows. It creates TV and radio dramas with the hope that the behavior of the characters it creates will improve- and even save- the lives of its audience.
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PMC’s Jamaica program, Outta Road (”What’s Happening out in the Streets”), was featured in the Communication Initiative.

Outta Road is the story of Jamaican teens and young adults from different social strata whose lives are interconnected. The drama is designed for 10-19 year olds across Jamaica, who through identification with transitional characters could vicariously experience the repercussions of their life choices. The social ills identified through nationwide formative research conducted by PMC in January 2006 helped guide the development of characters and plot lines. The characters grapple with conflicts ranging from love, friendship, peer pressure, violence, sex, drugs, HIV/AIDS, and more. Interspersed amongst dramatic conflicts and natural dialogue was popular reggae music. Outta Road also used epilogues to provide listeners with more information about the topics addressed and issues raised, such as where to access adolescent-friendly centres offering services like substance abuse counseling, HIV testing and contraception, and dispute resolution.

For full article, visit:
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/301281/347

The Emergent Media Center (EMC) is using the world’s favorite sport to help impact attitudes surrounding the treatment of women.

Empowering Play, a virtual soccer game created by EMC, is geared toward young boys, who earn points based on how they treat each other and the women in their lives.

“It’s built on FIFA fair-play rules,” says Ann DeMarle, director of EMC, which is based at Champlain College in South Burlington, VT. You show respect on the field, and respect to the females in one’s life—not just your teammates.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6699062.html?industryid=47061

Earlier this year Professor Albert Bandura visited London and presented a fascinating talk on the application of social learning theory (SLT – now called social cognitive theory). An edited version of this talk is in the June edition of The Psychologist (which is free online here). The research he discussed provides great support for SLT as well as demonstrating its application to the real world.

The talk focused on how SLT is being used to tackle urgent global problems. For example, in Tanzania the current population is 36 million. This is predicted to soar to 60 million in 25 years. Working with the Population Media Center, Bandura devised a radio drama which would raise people’s belief in their efficacy to control family size. Before many people believed that such control was the will of their deity.The programme has resulted in much wider use of birth control methods.

For full article, visit:
http://www.folensblogs.com/psychcompanion/blog/?p=197

Faced with the challenge of designing an educational video game that would hold the attention of the world’s youth, student designers at Champlain College came up with a motif they can run with: Soccer.

Nearly one year into a three-year project to create an electronic game to discourage violence against women, students in the college’s Emerging Media Center have begun fleshing out their ideas for a theme with universal appeal among the target audience, Third World boys ages 10-13. That theme is what most of the world knows as football — an activity with sure-fire entertainment value. Entertainment value is a prerequisite for any game that seeks to influence behavior, the students say.

For full article, visit:
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20090715/NEWS02/90714034

The author of this article, Tim Johnson, also wrote about our electronic game project in his recent blog
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll

Read Emergent Media Center’s (EMC) response to Nicholas Kristof’s recent blog post, ‘NYT Magazine Issue on Women.’

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30

PMC is working with EMC and UNFPA to create an electronic game for adolescent boys aimed at preventing violence against women. For more information on this project, visit http://www.populationmedia.org/where/worldwide/

Read PMC’s response to Andrew Revkin’s recent blog post, ‘90 Billion People, 1 Planet?’

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/90-billion-people-no-problem

n commemorating the 20th Anniversary of first World Population Day, the Population Institute today urged policymakers around the globe to recommit themselves to the expansion of family planning and reproductive health services.

William N. Ryerson, president of the Population Institute, said, “Much has been accomplished, but much remains to be done if we are to accomplish the Millennium Development Goal of giving all women access to reproductive health services. Many women who want to space or limit the number of their pregnancies, particularly in the least developed countries, today still face significant obstacles, including cultural barriers and lack of knowledge.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.examiner.com/x-16503-LA-County-Foreign-Policy-Examiner

Population Media Center’s Nigeria program, Ruwan Dare, is featured in the current issue of the Communication Initiative.

For full article, visit:
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/269771/cchangepicks/