Ku Saurara! (Listen Up!) Project, Phase I
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Phase I of the Ku Saurara! (Listen Up!) project took place between 2000 and 2003 in 12 states in northern Nigeria. It was implemented by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs (CCP), in collaboration with the African Radio Drama Association (ARDA) and a consortium of youth serving organizations (YSOs) named COYSON. Funding was provided by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
Ku Saurara! was designed to promote healthy behaviors among young people ages 10 to 24, enhance the policy environment for adolescent reproductive health, and improve the capacity of YSOs to support adolescent reproductive health activities. Phase 1 of the project utilized an innovative mix of mass media and community based activities as well as capacity and skill-building training and advocacy initiatives to achieve its goals.
OBJECTIVES/STRATEGIES
Phase I of the Ku Saurara! (KS) project addressed the Packard Foundation Nigeria objectives 3 (reproductive health information and services available to youth) and 4 (promoting positive policies to reduce reproductive health risks though public education and advocacy).
Through participation in and exposure to the KS project, young people and other stakeholders should have:
- Learned more about preventing HIV/AIDS and STIs;
- Dialogued more among themselves, and with parents or guardians, to discuss the issues of healthy reproductive behavior and sexual responsibility;
- Adopted STIs/HIV/AIDS risk-reducing behaviors (i.e., abstinence, fewer sex partners, consistent condom use, and the use of HIV/AIDS counseling and testing services);
- Increased their knowledge of family planning and reproductive health services offered in their communities and understood how to use these services/products to prevent unwanted pregnancies; and
- Sought clinical care and counseling for reproductive health needs.
RESEARCH
KS conducted Phase I baseline research in the three states of Borno, Bauchi and Kano. Interesting findings included:
- Roughly half of the sample was aware of contraception;
- Eight of every 10 respondents claimed that their spouse/sex partners approved family planning and about the same proportion approved their using it. However, a high proportion stated that they were not likely to discuss family planning in the near future;
- A substantial number of respondents did not use a condom at last sex;
- The proportion of respondents that had ever been tested for HIV/AIDS was relatively low; and,
- Most respondents reported they felt uncomfortable either sharing an office space with a person who had HIV/AIDS or buying things from a shop attendant with HIV/AIDS.
CCP project staff also carried out an evaluation of Ku Saurara! Phase I. Highlights included:
- Increased Social Support for Family Planning: Impact evaluation data demonstrated a significant increase in the perceived social support for contraceptive use since the baseline. The follow-up data also showed a positive relationship between campaign exposure and the perceived social support for contraceptive use.
- Self-Efficacy for Family Planning Use: Analysis of the follow-up data using the propensity score matching method1 indicated that the campaign helped to significantly increase young men’s perceived self-efficacy (a key proximate determinate for behavior) for contraceptive use by about 9 percentage points.
- Better Perception of Family Planning: Data revealed that northern youth who attended any of the KS community rallies were three times as likely as those who did not attend Ku Saurara! community rallies to have favorable attitudes towards using a family planning method.
- Family Planning Awareness: Data showed that campaign exposure was associated with increased knowledge of family planning methods. Propensity score analyses showed that awareness increased by 13 percentage points among young men exposed to the Ku Saurara! project and by 8 percentage points among their female peers.
Propensity score analysis involves predicting exposure to campaign activities based on factors determining exposure and categorizing survey respondents based upon their propensity scores. Respondents within each propensity category are compared one to another; an average of results is taken across all categories to obtain the net effect of campaign exposure.
1 Propensity score analysis involves predicting exposure to campaign activities based on factors determining exposure and categorizing survey respondents based upon their propensity scores. Respondents within each propensity category are compared one to another; an average of results is taken across all categories to obtain the net effect of campaign exposure.
ACTIVITIES AND HIGHLIGHTS
 Listen Up! Project Regional Steering Committee
During Phase I, KS established state chapters of its project steering committee. The committees are comprised of equal proportions of young people (who represent the target audience of the project) and adults (who represent local YSOs and youth-friendly health services). The committee fosters collaboration between young people and the YSOs, which serve them, thereby providing an innovative model of effective community-based action for other ARH programs throughout Nigeria and in other parts of the world.
Radio Variety Show
The project produced 78 episodes of the weekly, half hour Ku Saurara! (KS) Radio Variety Show in Phase I. The format included music, two dynamic hosts, a quiz question and popular feedback on the previous week’s topic, call-ins from listeners, a serial drama that told the story of a variety of characters, and regular guest appearances by doctors or other authority figures to address the topic of the day. All episodes were successfully broadcast on one regional station that reached all 12 northern states (and some southern), as well as 6 state-level stations.
Listeners’ Clubs
The project established 32 Ku Saurara! Radio Listeners’ Clubs across the 12 states. Club meetings were designed to better engage youth and to help them express their feelings about shows, discuss reactions, learn from the experience and reactions of other listeners, and ask questions and have them answered by a trained facilitator and other listeners.
 Ku Saurara! Roadshows
The ability to bring Ku Saurara! into the communities was one of the most innovative and important components of the project. The roadshows took the KS program directly to youth where they live. Each month the KS roadshow visited a different town in the North, and set up an afternoon of entertainment and information for young people. The roadshow featured personalities from the weekly radio program. There were also musical entertainment from local performers, drama shows (spun off from the radio program), song and dance contests, motivational talks, and quizzes. Opinions, comments, “teen talk” and musical segments were recorded at each roadshow and broadcast on Ku Saurara! radio programs.
Advocacy and Outreach
CCP developed an Advocacy Action Kit to be used with community and religious leaders in the North. The kit served the purposes of raising awareness of certain adolescent reproductive health issues among northern Nigerian leaders and garnering their support for the Ku Saurara! Project activities. The Ku Saurara! Advocacy Action Kit (updated during Phase II) contains fact sheets on key project themes and included:
Through COYSON, CCP conducted over 100 individual advocacy visits to 70 northern Nigerian community, religious and elected leaders during Ku Saurara! Phase I. Participating leaders included governors and their deputies, traditional leaders, commissioners of health, education, information, women’s affairs, as well as police commissioners and media house representatives. COYSON also organized a total of 9 advocacy workshops throughout the project states. Over 270 government officials, parents, members of civil society groups, media representatives, Christian and Muslim leaders participated in these workshops.
“Youth-Friendly” Service Provider Training and Clinics
KS sponsored a series of local and international training workshops to equip its local YSO and clinical partners with the technical tools needed to provide high quality, youth friendly reproductive health and youth counseling services. The local highlights were two IPC/C workshops conducted for members of various YSOs in the 12 project states using a curriculum (updated in Phase III) developed by KS. Through these workshops, KS trained 63 YSO staff members to provide better counseling and to improve their ability to effectively communicate with their adolescent clients. 14 KS I clinics providing ARH services were also established.
Additional Training
The project conducted an additional series of capacity building activities during Phase I. These included:
- Three radio program design workshops for 20 partners, including ARDA staff and youth script writers;
- A Script Writers’ Training for 10 young northern Nigerian writers;
- A training for 30 organizational members of COYSON (the project steering committee) in the use of the Ku Saurara! community and religious leader Advocacy Action Kit (the project produced over 20,000 kits in English and Hausa); and
An orientation for the 30 organizational members of COYSON) in the management and execution of successful community rallies (a total of 41 rallies were conducted).
MATERIALS AND RESOURCES
CONTACT INFORMATION
In Kano, Nigeria:
Hadiza Babayaro, Senior Program Officer
kusauraraa@yahoo.com
011.234.(0)802.309.1775
In Baltimore:
Katie Frank
Program Assistant II
kfrank@jhuccp.org
410.659.6300
Ku Saurara! (Listen Up!) Main Page
|
© 2005 The Johns Hopkins University. All rights reserved.