Guinea: PRISM Youth Campaign

• Overview
• Partners
• Target Audiences
• Objectives
• Activities
• Outputs
• Impact
• Future Plans

Overview

“Advice is better than silence, Talk to your children about STI/AIDS"

This campaign was conducted under the PRISM (Pour Renforcer les Interventions en Santé reproductive et MST/SIDA--Strengthening Interventions in Reproductive Health and STD/AIDS) project. PRISM was designed by USAID, together with the Government of Guinea, and is a five-year family planning and reproductive health program (1997 - 2002), with a three-year extension (2003-2005). It is led by Management Sciences for Health (MSH), in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs (CCP).

Organizing and working through youth and community groups was a central strategy in this district-based youth campaign in rural Guinea. Youth leaders were trained and involved in developing and disseminating reproductive health messages. Appropriate community channels, health centers, radio and print materials were all used to equip young people with the information and skills they needed. Abstinence was the campaign's first line of defense, out of respect for the strong influence of Muslim teachings regarding marriage and the family. However, condom use (as dual protection against both pregnancy and STIs) was encouraged among those who are sexually active. A campaign slogan and logo were developed to unify campaign interventions. Advocacy interventions among key audiences, including parents and faith-based groups, ensured support for this community-based youth campaign. Activities focused on the communities surrounding PRISM health centers. Providers and CBD agents received training and materials to strengthen their ability to deliver services and facilitate discussion with youth.

Partners

The campaign activities were organized and supervised by the Regional IEC Working Groups (GRIEC) and the Prefectoral IEC Working Groups (GPIEC). At the prefectoral level, the GPIEC established a "steering committee" in each prefecture to execute the campaign for that prefecture. The subcommittees within the steering committee were responsible for such areas as the parade, folk dancing, drama, logistics, sports events, production of materials, etc. The steering committees were composed of:

• members of youth associations
• members of social clubs ("sérés") or associations of people with common interests
• members of women's associations
• people working in the government, particularly the local health department

Government ministries (Public Health, Youth and Sports, Education, the Promotion of Women) and local NGOs are represented on the GPIEC. Another type of community group that helped a lot with the formation of community theater troupes and the recruitment of youth peer educators was the Association of Parents of Students and Friends of the School (APEAE). The campaign also had the support of the local Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CRD). Peace Corps volunteers assisted according to their talents.

Target Audiences

Youth, Youth leaders, Community groups

Objectives

"Who would have thought that this little plastic pouch could save human lives? Use condoms every time you have sex"

This campaign aimed to prevent STIs, HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancies through a combination of youth-driven, community-based and mass media interventions.

From July 2000 to December 2001, increase the percentage of:

• youth who know that a person in good health could have the AIDS virus from 60 to 80 percent;
• youth who know that condoms protect against HIV from 18 to 25 percent;
• youth who used condoms during last intercourse, from 19 to 25 percent;
• youth who were encouraged to practice abstinence as a result of the campaign;
• girls who use modern FP methods to avoid unintended pregnancy, from 4 to 6 percent;
• girls who intend to use modern FP methods in the future from 40 to 60 percent.

Activities

Campaign Launches
The campaign launch program was basically the same in all eight prefectures and sub-prefectures:

1. Gathering in the public square. The crowd would consist of the entire local population, all the peer educators, dancers, IEC theater troupes, members of other organizations doing IEC work in the region, or in the prefecture or sub-prefecture, etc.
2. Opening the carnival with a parade through the town, following a planned itinerary, stopping in strategic locations around town to deliver informational messages on STI/AIDS and unintended pregnancy.
3. Arrival at the rally site for more speeches launching the youth campaign.
4. Speeches by various administrative authorities: Prefects, Sub-prefects, Mayors, the official in charge of health promotion and IEC at the Ministry of Public Health, the PRISM IEC/BCC Technical Advisor, etc.
5. Sports and cultural activities in the afternoon (or the following day, in some cases).
6. A dance party in the evening.

Train Peer Educators
Members of the Regional IEC Group (GRIEC) supervised the process of identifying peer educators. Several community representatives participated in the identification of peer educators: health workers, members of the Regional Defense Committees (CRD) and parents' associations, and the sub-prefects on occasion. The main mission of the peer educators and the peer educator leaders was to educate young people through STI/AIDS and unintended pregnancy prevention messages, but also to direct their peers to health centers for additional RH information or treatment, as needed.

Participating hair dressers and tailors identified by PRISM sign boards

Involve hair dressers, tailors and bar/café owners
Many of the social mobilization activities were carried out through a partnership between PRISM and the managers and staff of small businesses. These included hairdressing salons, sewing centers, auto repair shops, and even a few bars and cafés. In Siguiri, a partnership was also developed with the women's sérés. The mission of these business owners was to:

• Distribute and disseminate IEC materials;
• Demonstrate how to use condoms using wooden penis models made available to them for this purpose;
• Facilitate educational talks on site;
• Refer their clients to the health center, as appropriate.

To solidify this partnership and motivate the owners of the hair and sewing centers to be active, PRISM helped them increase their visibility by providing them with signs symbolizing this partnership.

A total of 150 signs were produced and placed at the entrances of these small businesses. PRISM also gave them incentives in the form of promotional materials given out to the different partners: combs, posters, t-shirts, etc. To reward the most dynamic partners, PRISM assisted in the purchase of some of the materials used by the hairdressing salons and sewing centers in the course of their professional activities, such as thread, cloth, etc.

Outputs

• A question-and-answer booklet providing answers to questions dropped anonymously in question boxes at high schools.
• 5,000 balloons, stickers, buttons, combs, and pens, 2,500 T-shirts and caps, 1,500 flags, 950 commemorative cloths (pagnes), 900 men's shirts, 100 bags for peer educators' supplies, 1,000 cloth handbags for girls, all featuring the campaign logo and slogan.
• Two posters: one promoting condom use, and one encouraging parents to talk to their children about issues related to growing up (2,000 copies of each).
• Three brochures: on abstinence (30,000), unintended pregnancy (30,000), and STI/HIV/AIDS (40,000).
• Signboards identifying 150 participating businesses in eight prefectures.
• 16 youth variety radio programs (produced by members of high school press clubs)
• 5 radio "microprograms" in Malinké
• Participatory theater play, entitled Si je savais ("If only I had known"), videotaped in Malinké.

Impact

• Results show that condom use at last sex was significantly higher (p < 0.01) among youth in the intervention area (47.6% of the males, and 27% for the females) compared to the control area (24.1% of the males, and 2.7% of the females), and to the DHS 1999 results for Haute Guinea for this age group (24% of males and 2.3% of females).
• Results also show significant differences in perception of community openness to discussing youth sexuality issues for the intervention area as compared to the control area: 60.4 % males and 41% females in the intervention area as compared to 32.7% and 13.3% males and females respectively in the control area (Beyla, a town outside the project area that was not exposed to the campaign).
• Knowledge of condom use for dual protection was significantly higher (p < 0.01) for the intervention area (64.3% of the males and 35.7% of the females) as compared to 14.3% of the males and none of the females in the control area.
• A significant association found (p < 0.01) between level of campaign exposure and condom use at last sex. On the other hand, once a respondent had participated in two campaign activities there was a "diminishing return" effect on behavior change associated with participation in a larger number of activities.

Future Plans

The Youth Campaign was succeeded by a Maternal and Child Health campaign, which is still going on. The youth peer educators were given an orientation in maternal and child health and are now actively promoting MCH as well as adolescent reproductive health. As of June 2003, a new prefecture (Kissidougou) had been added to the PRISM project, for a total of 9 prefectures. A youth campaign will be launched in Kissidougou in August.

The Ministry of Health has allocated funds to conduct youth peer educator activities throughout Guinea (the PRISM project covers only the region of Upper Guinea).

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