PMC was recently featured in Earth Island Journal
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/sex_sells/

Sex Sells: A Tiny Nonprofit Uses Mass Media to Encourage Family Planning

Fikrite is a girl in trouble. Her grandfather has just died and now a neighbor, a man named Damte, has taken over the house and is trying to turn the place into a bar and brothel. Fikrite says she won’t allow it, so Damte starts spreading rumors about the girl and soon everyone, including her boyfriend, thinks that she is hiding a child born out of wedlock. Damte then seduces Fikrite’s stepsister, Lamrot, gets her hooked on booze and drugs, and knocks her up. When Lamrot tries to abort the pregnancy, she almost bleeds to death and lands in the hospital, where she finds out that she is HIV-positive.

If this sounds like overcooked melodrama – well, that’s the point. The story comes from “Yeken Kignit” (“Looking Over One’s Life”), a radio soap opera that gripped much of Ethiopia for 257 episodes beginning in 2002. The show had all of the elements that make serial dramas popular: sex, romance, mischief, betrayal, suspense. But the wildly successful program – which reached more than one half of Ethiopian adults during its two-year run and sparked a craze for naming baby girls Fikrite – wasn’t designed just for entertainment. Produced by a small US organization called the Population Media Center (PMC), the show was written with the express purpose of encouraging family planning, women’s empowerment, and HIV/AIDS awareness. Not all the listeners knew this, however, and that was also the point.
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The 2008/2009 Winter Newsletter features stories about PMC’s programs in Senegal, Mexico, and Vietnam, as well as an in-depth interview with Dr. Albert Bartlett on the issue of population.

Winter 2008/2009 Newsletter

In 2007, PMC had projects in Brazil, Eastern Caribbean, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Mali, Mexico, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, the United States and Vietnam.

2007 Annual Report (PDF, 3MB)

Today as we commemorate World Population Day, Population Media Center and Population Institute pledge their commitment to help bring population numbers into balance with natural resources, so humanity can live in harmony with the earth.
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I am pleased to report to you that the Board of Directors of the Population Institute (PI) has formed a formal partnership with Population Media Center (PMC).
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Participatory Assessment of Gugar Goge, an Entertainment-Education: A Qualitative Assessment Report
by Arvind Singhal, Sarah Hurlburt, and Radha Vij

This report documents the results of a participatory assessment exercise conducted in Nigeria to gauge audience reception of Gugar Goge (”Tell It To Me Straight”), an entertainment-education radio soap opera that sought to promote education for girls, the delay of marriage and pregnancies, and the adoption of family planning and maternal health services. The assessment exercise, which used participatory sketching and participatory photography, aimed to assess how frequent listeners engaged with the radio programme, and how they derived personal meanings from its plot, characters, and educational messages.

For full article, visit:
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/269041/304

Below is an article on PMC’s work. It appeared in the winter 2008 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

For full article, download:

Population Media Center 2008 Smart Soaps (PDF, 172 KB)

From the website of the Population Reference Bureau:

When were you born? How many brothers and sisters did you have? Where did your ancestors live? How long will you live?

The answers to such questions are the core of demography. While many people think of demography as a kind of dry social accounting—or as a key variable for marketing campaigns—demographer Joe McFalls claims that people develop a fascination with demography when they learn how it relates to their own lives and backgrounds. “Indeed,” he says, “if people are not interested in demographic phenomena, they are not interested in themselves.”

For full article, download:

Lively Introduction (PDF, 557 KB)

Ode Magazine
Issue 32

By Kim Ridley

Steamy tales of sex, betrayal and suspense can carry important social messages
Young and poor, Fikirte is in many ways Ethiopia’s Everywoman. Her life takes a turn for the worse when she meets Damtew, who is so obsessed with revenge against Fikirte’s innocent grandfather that he kills him and then begins to prey on her. He swindles Fikirte and seduces her half-sister, giving her HIV. He spreads vicious rumors to turn Fikirte’s family against her and to crush her dreams of finishing school. Still not satisfied, Damtew tries to murder Fikirte—twice.
Does Fikirte’s life sound like a soap opera? It is. The saga of Fikirte, Damtew, and the other captivating characters of Yeken Kignit (“Looking Over One’s Daily Life”) kept millions of Ethiopians glued to their radios for two and a half years. It also persuaded some of them to change their lives.
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Published in 2005, this 74-page guide is designed to be used by journalists and media personnel to plan and execute the production and broadcast of Sabido-style entertainment-education serial dramas for HIV/AIDS prevention, especially among women and girls. This is part of UNFPA’s strategy to reinforce the capacities of journalists at the country level to prepare them to be informed agents of gender- and culturally-sensitive HIV prevention programs.
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