Africa Alive!

• Project Overview
• Objectives and Strategies
• Activities and Highlights
• Research
• Future Directions
• Materials and Resources
• Contact Information

Project Overview

Africa Alive! is an innovative multinational network of youth and AIDS organizations that aims to reach and empower youth with HIV/AIDS prevention programs using popular entertainment. It responds to the fact that hundreds of youth organizations have already joined the fight against AIDS throughout Africa. Africa Alive! provides the inspiration and means for these organizations to work together and to scale up the response toward AIDS on a regional level.

The network builds on positive, pro-active themes and is committed to the engagement of youth as full partners in every phase and aspect of a project.

Visit the Africa Alive! website for more information on this exciting initiative.

Objectives/Strategies

Africa Alive! uses an entertainment-education (“edutainment”) approach, which combines education and entertainment to attract attention and provide a forum for delivering behavior change messages to young people. Africa Alive!’s objectives are to:

• Build networks of HIV/AIDS and youth organizations active in AIDS prevention activities in participating Africa Alive! countries.
• Strengthen the capacity of Africa Alive! network organizations for advocacy, public/private fundraising, and design and implementation of program interventions.
• Support positive ongoing advocacy efforts at the national and community levels.
• Generate and leverage funds from the public and private sectors.
• Generate, disseminate, and scale-up identified proven communication program practices for behavior change on the national, community, and individual levels.
• Engage youth, adults, and local organizations as counterparts in making Africa Alive! activities relevant, successful, and sustainable through capacity building.

The overall strategy involves four key components:

• Use popular culture, such as music, drama, and mass media to encourage youth involvement in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
• Develop role models. Africa Alive! identifies, promotes, and supports role models as key figures in youth culture at every level of society, from popular African musicians to local youth who become local heroes because they are "making it happen."
• Give youth a direct voice in the media by encouraging them to get personally involved through sending postcards and personal stories to media, through establishing regular radio and print "diaries" of young people living with AIDS, and through individual pledges to get engaged in community level action.
• Build sustainable, relevant, and supportive networks as the key to achieving these strategies.

Activities and Highlights

KENYA

The Puppetry Project: Africa Alive! Kenya reaches youth in the informal settlements of Kariobangi, Mathare and Huruma in Nairobi with HIV/AIDS behavior change messages through puppetry. The project, run in collaboration with the National Council of Churches in Kenya (NCCK), trained 15 puppeteers who perform in communities.

Enter-Educate Peer Education: Implemented in the Bondo District in partnership with the Pfizer Foundation from 2003 to 2005, this project facilitated the dissemination of HIV/AIDS messages through entertainment-education. With a total of 90 peer educators trained, in-school youth were reached through anti-AIDS and abstinence clubs formed and run by the students themselves, while out of school youth were reached through youth groups. Activities included Participatory Education Theatre (PET), organized drama, and inter-school debates.

Post Card Project: Dubbed “Post Cards from Africa,” activities of the project were designed to encourage young people in Africa to share their experiences, their stories, their hopes and fears about living with reality of AIDS with concerned people around the world, in order to increase dialogue and reduce the stigma around HIV/AIDS. Young people wrote post cards, letters, and stories about their lives and their concerns. These accounts by the youth have been compiled and published in “Youth Speak.”

Pen Pals Project: The Pen Pals project was introduced as an extension of the Post Card project. Under the pen pals initiative, writers of post cards were matched with individuals and youth groups in other countries, including the US.

Role Models and Local Heroes: Africa Alive! developed a training curriculum and supportive materials to assist young music artistes, club DJs, and well-known athletes in the dissemination of key messages on HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention during the course of their daily work. The artistes/role models were issued briefing kits on the status of HIV/AIDS in Africa, their responsibilities as role models, the role of edutainment, how to integrate HIV/AIDS prevention messages/activities into their agenda, and effective communication of messages during performances.

TANZANIA

Volunteer Internship Program. In partnership with Canadian Youth International and with the support of CIDA, Africa Alive Tanzania developed and implemented a volunteer internship program for youth from overseas. Young people studying community development and communication-related topics worked in communities implementing Africa Alive! activities.

Youth to Youth. This peer education program raises awareness of HIV/AIDS.

Rural Young Women’s Development Project. This initiative promotes gender equity among rural women.

PLHA Training. In partnership with YouthNet, more than 30 young people living with HIV/AIDS have been trained in edutainment (theatre), life saving skills, public speaking and home-based care. With an award from the Stay Alive Youth Foundation, Africa Alive! Tanzania implemented a 9 month program targeting young people living with HIV/AIDS in the districts of Dodoma and Mpwapwa.

Youth Centre. With a land contribution from the village government in Mtera constituency of Dodoma District, Africa Alive! Tanzania constructed and established a youth centre. In addition to HIV/AIDS awareness activities, the centre also offers sporting and recreational activities, cultural events, educational outreach for girls’ empowerment, counseling services, and income-generating activities.

UGANDA

Puppetry Training and Roll Out. In September, 2005, Africa Alive! Uganda with technical assistance from the Africa Alive! regional office and the Kenyan Chapter conducted puppetry training. A number of youth groups drawn from different regions of Uganda participated in the training and are currently engaged in various community puppetry outreach programs in their regions. The puppetry training empowered the puppeteers with a well rounded knowledge youth reproductive health issues, using puppetry as an entertaining and educational means to deliver appropriate messages around RH, FP, HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, stigma and gender.

ZAMBIA

The Africa Alive project was launched in Zambia during the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) Conference in Sept 1999 through a musical concert attended by 5 African Ministers of Health and 5000 international delegates and local youth. It was broadcasted live on national TV for 2 hours and was a bold, multinational initiative that used entertainment as a vehicle for positive social change. Some of the activities that were part of the project were:

• Road shows that were community-based interventions to enable awareness, mobilization and youth involvement. The show reached over 60,000 youth through 8 shows in 6 districts.
• The Postcards Initiative that promoted networking among young people in Zambia with young people in other African countries and in the USA, by sharing information on personal life experiences concerning HIV/AIDS.
• Music, drama, quiz/competitions, condom demonstrations, question/answer sessions and distribution of materials.
• A four episode musical/talk show TV programme focusing on HIV/AIDS using popular musicians, known as X-plosion 2000 Special
• Participation by artists in the 2000 Music Festival held at the Alliance Francaise Annual music Day.
• Organization of the World AIDS Day concerts.

Research

In the Bondo District of western Kenya, Africa Alive! used a separate sample pretest-posttest design with a midterm evaluation to assess the extent to which project activities impacted HIV-related knowledge, attitudes, and practices of the project’s target audience. The study used both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods; a structured questionnaire was administered to young people, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) were conducted among community members and youth groups, and in-depth interviews were conducted with community leaders and selected health service providers who provided services to young people and youth group leaders. The quantitative aspects of the evaluation found:

• Over 90,000 people were reached with information and services over the project period.
• Increased HIV/AIDS knowledge. At baseline, 45% of respondents knew that AIDS had no cure, compared to 64% at posttest.
• Positive change in behavioral intent. At baseline, 27% of those interviewed said they would decline sex if his or her partner refused to use a condom. This increased to 42% at the end of the project.
• Increase in age of sexual debut. At baseline, 80% of respondents reported having sex before the age of 20. At follow-up, less that 40% of respondents reported having sex before the age of 20.
• Increased service utilization. At baseline, 27% of respondents reported ever having sought VCT services, compared to 55% at the end of the project.
• Mixed results on multiple concurrent sexual partnerships. The proportion of respondents with one sexual partner increased from 16% at baseline to 45% at follow-up. The proportion with two sexual partners remained the same (30%), and the proportion with three partners increased (from 20% to 25%). At follow-up, no young people reported having four or more sexual partners, compared to 25% and 10% who reported having four partners and five or more partners at baseline, respectively.
• Increased condom use. Eighty percent of respondents reported ever having used a condom at follow-up, compared to 70% at baseline.

Qualitatively:

• Most young people reported having better HIV/AIDS-related information now than before. Despite improvement, the quality and clarity of the information remained substandard, and communication channels were not always appropriate for the youth audience.
• While some young people still felt that it was fashionable to have more than one sexual partner, they understood the dangers associated with the practice. Most of those with two or more sexual partners lived apart from their steady partners and were therefore keeping other partners as a “remedial measure.”
• The project was able to effectively link young people seeking various services such as STI treatment to service delivery points. However, staff attitudes at service delivery points continue to hinder young people’s access to services. In the future, efforts should be made to include provider training and make the service delivery environment more friendly and acceptable to young people.
• Discussions with community members and leaders showed a high level of acceptance of the project from the community and support for project activities.

Future Directions

In the remaining time on the project, Africa Alive! plans to:

• Scale up activities for wider geographical coverage.
• Create new and strengthen existing partnerships in order to mobilize human and financial resources.
• Conduct additional fundraising to ensure the sustainability of the organization and its activities

Materials and Resources

• Youth Speak!! This regional resource material is a compilation of the cards, letters, and stories written by young people during “Post Cards from Africa.”
• Africa Alive! CD. Songs on the CD include dual protection messages.
• Africa Alive! Website. The site gives facts on HIV/AIDS and provides links to other HIV/AIDS-related websites, spotlights different Africa Alive! programs, details recent Africa Alive! events, and includes sections on volunteering and how young people can help in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
• Role Model Kits. These kits, which include a training curriculum, were created to build the capacity of musicians and athletes as role models for youth.

Contact Information

Baltimore: Jennifer Boyle, jboyle@jhuccp.org
Kenya: Walter Odede, africaalivek@wananchi.com, afalivek@yahoo.com
Tanzania: Gregory Kamugisha, aatanzan@udsm.ac.tz
Uganda: Geoffrey Wadulo, casedev24@yahoo.com