South Africa
Mind, Body and Soul Community Radio Program
 Activity Dates
2004 – ongoing
Activity Summary
Community radio engages local audiences, reducing the distance between broadcaster and community. It is a participatory medium that has a high degree of credibility and listener loyalty and has the potential to be an effective educational and developmental form of communication.
ABC Ulwazi is a registered NGO that produces educational and developmental radio programs for, and offers training to, the community radio sector. ABC Ulwazi aims to strengthen the community radio sector so that vital educational and developmental information can be communicated to disadvantaged communities, to develop the community station sector into a communicational channel, to create a dialogue and a voice within civil society through a sustainable community radio sector, and to develop radio as a tool for education and development.
ABC Ulwazi works with 60 community radio stations (CRS), forming a network that covers all of South Africa, from deep rural areas to urban informal settlements, reaching some 6 million listeners every day. With JHHESA, ABC Ulwazi uses Entertainment-Education (E-E) methodologies as an activator and platform for building caring communities through a radio feature series around 4 main themes: prevention, orphaned and vulnerable children, care and support, and civil society response.
Objectives
- Attributable positive change in HIV preventive behaviour amongst young people aged 18-35 and people aged 35+
- Attributable positive change in supportive attitudes amongst young people aged 18-35 and people aged 35+
- Attributable awareness of prevention, treatment, care and support strategies amongst young people aged 18-35 and people aged 35+
Implementation
Feature productions:
ABC Ulwazi develops, scripts, produces and broadcasts 12-minute episodes of the E-E radio soap opera series, ‘Body, Mind and Soul’ in English, Zulu, Sotho and Afrikaans. Each episode is built around critical HIV and AIDS issues and messages that move beyond the mainstream understanding of HIV and AIDS. Episode topics include primary and secondary abstinence, partner reduction, faithfulness, delayed sexual debut, condom use, antiretroviral drugs, post exposure prophylaxis, PMTCT, and HIV testing.
Training:
ABC Ulwazi trained CRS production staff to inform the broadcasters about the content addressed by features, train broadcasters how to set up local listener associations to activate community interest groups to respond to the broadcasts, and trained broadcasters how to mount a campaign to multiply the impact of the broadcast.
Listener’s Associations:
To maximise the impact of the broadcast interventions, ABC Ulwazi developed Listeners’ Associations (LAs) to respond to monitor and respond to on air content and develop and generate new, relevant and community focused programming. LAs act as the mediators between the CRS and the community. NGOs and CBOs in the field support the LAs and add expert knowledge gathered on the ground in the relevant communities.
Audiences
Young people aged 18-35 years, adults over age 35 years
Partners
ABC Ulwazi
Back to South Africa
Note about materials: Some of the materials and resources listed on each page are available in their full form, others are represented by image or citation only. For more information and resources, go to www.jhuccp.org
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