The Drum Beat 396 - HIV/AIDS and Local Action
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This issue of The Drum Beat looks specifically at HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention efforts that stem from local and community action. It provides: a few examples of projects and activities; a number of articles, interviews, papers, and presentations that explore empowerment of communities and individuals to act on their own behalf; and a selection of support resources for those whose work focuses on local and community action for HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention.
If you would like your organisation's communication work or research and resource documents to be featured on The CI websites and in The Drum Beat newsletters, please contact Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com
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ACTION
For additional summaries of relevant programmes, click here and search by categories: "HIV/AIDS" and "Local Participation and Action".
1.Radio Soap Operas for Ethnic Minorities - China
As part of a broader initiative to prevent HIV/AIDS, human trafficking, and drug abuse across the Upper Mekong sub-region, 2 ethnic minority language radio soap operas were produced in China's Yunnan province: "Life of Tragedies" and "The Weeping Jade Dragon Snow Mountain". The 2 dramas address not only individual behaviour change, but also the cultural, spiritual/religious and social context of individuals. In addition to providing HIV/AIDS education, the objective is to preserve traditional culture and language and to educate younger people about them. In developing the programmes, the active involvement of those most affected reflected an orientation toward local content and ownership. For instance, village-based focus groups and interviews helped identify initial themes. Most members of the research team (who collected baseline information and carried out formative research) were from the same ethnic group as the intended listeners; according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), this gave them a deeper understanding of the community they studied, as well as easier access to the people. Storylines were based, to the extent possible, on actual experiences of the villagers.
Contact Dr. David Feingold d.feingold@unescobkk.org
2.Funu-Jëm: A Documentary by the Kaani-Gui Troupe of Senegal
Kaani-Gui was formed over a decade ago when local football players began holding "soirees" in their neighbourhood to raise funds for new football uniforms and equipment. As the troupe drew attention for their Friday-night shows, a handful of members decided to explore new horizons and develop a play about AIDS. This documentary was inspired by the success of a Sengalese national tour of a play of the same name, created by Kaani-Gui. It captures Kaani-Gui performing in small villages, during their rehearsal and while they are travelling. This depiction of the troupe is meant to serve as an educational tool for students and activists, as it depicts the grassroots agenda of a youth group struggling to make a difference, as well as key lessons about HIV/AIDS transmission and its effect on the family unit.
3.Darpana for Development - India
One component of the India-based Darpana Academy of Performing Arts, Darpana for Development (D-D) creates grassroots projects using live performances as entry points to stimulate discussion and action among varied audiences related to issues of development and social change. Some of these initiatives have involved training traditional itinerant folk performers to become change agents (e.g., by performing shows in the hinterlands of the Dangs and Valsad that deal with issues of infant and maternal mortality); other projects have focused on bringing together groups of people from tribal areas and training them as actor-activists to go back into their own villages with new ideas of change. D-D also has an advocacy focus, as some of the performance pieces it has created are specifically designed to reach the policy maker or the politician. Working in partnership with The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)'s Anadshala schools, D-D actor/activists and local actors from Valsad (already trained and oriented by D-D) are instigating activities and projects in 10 schools to make the children information bearers on issues such as HIV, breastfeeding, and hygiene.
Contact admn@darpana.com
4.Women Defy Taboo to Fight HIV - Ethiopia
On June 18 2003, the National Coalition of Women Against HIV/AIDS was launched in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As part of their commitment to challenge sex-related taboos and traditions, each of the Coalition's organisers used the word 'tsota', which means 'sex' in the Amharic language. By fostering a spirit of openness like that characterising the public launch, the women hope to reverse a code of silence that, in the minds of some experts quoted in the article, has contributed to the high rate of HIV infection in this country. Members point out that building awareness is not their goal - they say that HIV/AIDS awareness is widespread in Ethiopia. Rather, they seek to motivate real change in sexual behaviour patterns.
5.Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA) - United States
Launched in May 2005, Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA) is a coalition of HIV-positive Americans, activists, and organisations engaging in rallies and other advocacy endeavours to demand that local, national, and world leaders take steps to stop the epidemic in the United States and abroad. The national grassroots movement is supported by AIDS and community groups across the country, and draws on community involvement and action through local events and cross-country caravans. C2EA's "Days of Action" take place in Washington, D.C. Designed to raise public awareness and stimulate change, these public protests call for such Congressional action as the reauthorisation and full funding of the Ryan White CARE Act, which provides treatment and care to more than a half-million uninsured Americans with HIV/AIDS, and increased funding programmes to support people with AIDS worldwide (e.g., the U.N. Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria). Symbolism is used in some of these events to make a statement. For example, at the campaign launch, more than 3,500 people living with HIV/AIDS and their loved ones converged on Washington, marching down Pennsylvania Avenue and then lining up 8,500 pairs of donated shoes in the street directly in front of the White House to symbolise the number of people worldwide who die of AIDS daily.
Contact info@campaigntoendaids.org
6.Watu Wa Watu (People Serve People) - Tanzania
This is a non-profit, non-governmental, charitable, non-sectarian, and politically independent grassroots movement of hundreds of individuals and large communities working to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS by raising awareness of HIV/AIDS in southern Tanzania. Watu Wa Watu shapes its communication strategies around principles such as unity, commitment (people serve people), participation (volunteering), transparency, relationship-building and mutual respect, and dignity and freedom. Examples of specific activities that are infused with these principles include: sensitising and mobilising various individuals, groups, communities, tribes, and their leaders; integrating health professionals and other skilled members of the community to: promote and foster community engagement, form peer groups, organise formal adult education and HIV programmes, and design and implement policies supporting the fight against AIDS; training facilitators through workshops and seminars; drawing on the arts both as live performances and as video presentations during educational sessions; producing local teaching materials; building meeting information centres for members of Watu Wa Watu and their communities; and collaborating with local tribes, local village leaders, schools, churches, hospital, and other organisations and governmental structures to find effective ways to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic together and respond in a more effective and coordinated way.
Contact watuwawatu1@maaango.org
7.Grave Encounter: A Play
This is a play written for a youth audience that addresses HIV/AIDS-related myths, facts, and issues through comedy, drama, and the personification of the disease itself. According to the author, "[a]t the end of the play, a question and answer session may be necessary to assess the audience's understanding of the play. Excerpts that directly affect each target audience could also be extracted for performances so long as approval is sought and credit given."
See Also:
8.Tabaka Artisan Centre - Kisumu, Nyanza, Kenya
9.Amakhosi's Theatre for Community Action - Zimbabwe
10.My Voice Counts! Sex Education Campaign - United States
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DISCUSSION
"Non-Material" Resources in Health and Development Communication
The Health e Communication website is hosting a discussion with Dr. Benjamin Lozare (Associate Director, Center for Communication Programs, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University) beginning June 4 2007.
Nobel Prize winner Robert Fogel argues that inequality in the distribution of "non-material" resources such as vision of opportunity and work ethic is more severe and profound than the inequality of "material" resources. Drawing on these insights, Dr. Lozare asks whether health and development communication should focus more on the development of "non-material" and "spiritual" resources.
Join this Health e Communication discussion, as we explore the importance of "non-material" resources for development, ask why this is a neglected area, and exchange ideas about how health communicators can nurture and harness this important resource more effectively.
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THINKING
For additional strategic thinking, please click here.
11.Focusing on the Forest, Not Just the Tree: Cultural Strategies for Combating AIDS
by Arvind Singhal
This article challenges the reliance of behaviour change communication (BCC) interventions for HIV prevention, care, and support on individuals ("the tree") as the locus of change. Arvind Singhal's claim here is that attending to the "forest" of which individuals are a part - that is, locally-situated knowledge, including its cultural elements - can be an effective strategy in designing and implementing HIV/AIDS communication campaigns. Singhal concludes that, while communication practitioners need to be mindful about the dangers of manipulating or subverting culture, community- and dialogue-based approaches can make important contributions to HIV/AIDS initiatives in a way that biomedical, individual-oriented strategies often cannot.
12.Ethics of Community Empowerment
by Neil Orr and David Patient
The authors explore how communication can be used as a strategy for overcoming stigma and apathy in order to motivate communities to participate in, and sustain, community projects. While acknowledging that each community is unique, they seek in this 8-page paper to articulate a common set of values - an ethical framework - for guiding efforts to empower others in the long term.
13.What's Culture Got to Do with HIV and AIDS?
by Helen Gould
"The most powerful examples of a cultural approach to HIV and AIDS can be seen in development communication programmes." Author Helen Gould contrasts the results of studies demonstrating the increased prevalence of disease where mass media campaigns have not used culturally sensitive strategies with the following examples of culturally sensitive communication modes: "drawing on the knowledge of traditional healers and local communication methods - rites, dances, dramas and chants..., and working with participatory cultural methods in group and community settings to explore lifestyle change options...[as well as using] minority languages, ... local customs, traditions and technologies..."
14.Interview with the Communication for Social Change Consortium
In this May 2004 interview, Denise Gray-Felder, President and CEO of the Communication for Social Change Consortium, said: "there are a lot of places in the world where the methods are working, that we had nothing to do with. And that is actually the beauty and excitement of the effort. Perhaps we catalysed it indirectly - somebody read something or they heard something and they decided to try it. Or it had been going on for years anyway - which sort of validates the need for our work. For example, last week at this global meeting at WHO [the World Health Organization] on integrating prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS communication, after my presentation and Neil Ford's presentation on Communication for Social Change and how it can be applied to communication in general, a gentleman stood up from Botswana...[who] represents a physician's group, I believe, in Botswana working in AIDS. And he said, 'This is very exciting to see that the WHO has finally caught up with what we have been doing for five years.' And then he proceeded to describe, across Botswana, the grassroots efforts where people come together and say, listen, we've got people in our community who are very sick. We've got children who have no parents because they have lost them to AIDS. We have people that could be well - what they call the Lazarus effect - that if you give them antiretroviral treatment they can, like Lazarus, suddenly turn their life around and be healthy again. And [he pointed out that] they have used this notion of community-based dialogue and decision-making, implementation and evaluation to take on the issue on their own..."
15.Mchezewangoma becomes Mchezangoma: Kenyan Youth Empower their Peers to Adopt HIV Prevention Through Creative Ngoma Dialogue Circles
by Mjomba Leonard
The author states that "communication for behavior change in Kenya valorizes literacy-based, Eurocentric approaches such as lectures, brochures, posters and ignores oral African traditional forms of communication which are a powerful transforming agent." Along these lines, he suggests that most HIV interventions consist of a series of formal, one-day occasions that involve "extraordinarily dressed" HIV/AIDS experts "ceremoniously arriving in a convoy of big cars" who then speak from a high table to the students "as if they were empty vessels to be filled." This article examines how Ngoma - local cultural performance in Kenya - can be used as an alternative communication strategy to motivate dialogue and empower youth to adopt HIV/AIDS prevention measures. This approach is in tune with the long tradition that involves grassroots people in Africa expressing themselves through drumming, singing, talk-singing, poetry, drama, dancing, story telling, feasting, and other cultural rituals.
16.HIV/AIDS and Communication Issues and Solutions: Grounding the Debate
by Winnie Ssanyu-Sseruma
In this presentation from the 8th International Communication for Development Roundtable held November 26-28 2001, Winnie Ssanyu-Sseruma, a woman living with HIV, discusses the importance of information about HIV/AIDS being conveyed in clear language that directly relates to people's experiences and lives, the importance of the role of HIV positive people in the fight against AIDS, the key elements of empowering HIV positive people with skills, and paying them for the work they do.
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DISCUSSION
Stakeholders in Eastern and Southern Africa are invited to take part in an electronic forum exploring pertinent HIV prevention issues. The goal of the 6-month-long discussion (April 30th to October 30th 2007) is to inform programme design and implementation across the region. It is being hosted by the Southern Africa HIV and AIDS Information and Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS) with support from the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) and technical support from Health and Development Networks (HDN).
Member contributions and comments on the following six themes of Accelerating Prevention are particularly encouraged:
- Key drivers of the epidemic (including condom use and concurrent partnerships);
- Role of men in prevention (including male circumcision);
- Prevention for young people;
- Role of 'classical' sexually transmitted infection (STI) treatment in HIV prevention;
- Prevention from the perspective of people living with HIV (PLHIV), including positive prevention; and
- Strategic condom programming.
Following this discussion, a summary will be prepared that captures the highlights of all contributions; all contributors will be duly acknowledged. The summary will be published by SAfAIDS in hard copy as well as CD-ROM versions.
Please click here for more information.
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SUPPORT RESOURCES
For additional resources, click here and search for "hiv".
17.Techniques and Practices for Local Responses to HIV/AIDS: UNAIDS Toolkit
by M. Wegelin-Schuringa and G. Tiendrebeogo (eds.)
This toolkit was created to help strengthen the capacity and competence of people addressing HIV/AIDS. The key intended audience includes national facilitators for local responses, as well as district support teams or umbrella organisations whose task it is to motivate, facilitate, and support communities in planning their own responses. "This is, briefly, what we have learned from effective local responses, the responses by people where they live and work. How can one foster such effective responses at large scale?..."
18.Measuring Change: A Guide to Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation of Communication for Social Change
by Ailish Byrne, with Denise Gray-Felder, Jim Hunt and Will Parks
This publication was developed for community groups seeking to perfect their skills in communication for social change (CFSC) and participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E). It is intended to help participants, including those most affected by change, to ask and consider essential questions about what they propose to change, whether or not desired change has been accomplished, and how successful the initiative has been. As a guide, it is intended to be adapted to local needs and contexts, and to be used flexibly.
19.Communities Measure Change: A Reference Guide to Monitoring Communication for Social Change
by Ailish Byrne, Denise Gray-Felder and Jim Hunt (eds.)
Developed by the CFSC Consortium, this reference guide aims to provide an easy-to-use summary of key principles of communication for social change and how it can be evaluated. The participatory process that the Consortium recommends is called PM&E. It is a widely recognised approach that actively involves members of a community in conducting and managing the evaluation process.
20. Grassroots Alliance for Community Education (G.R.A.C.E.)
This is a 501c3 non-profit organisation (G.R.A.C.E. USA) with headquarters in the United States and an international non-governmental organisation (G.R.A.C.E. Africa), registered in Kenya. G.R.A.C.E. fosters community development efforts that originate from the grassroots, with leadership retained within each community. To this end, they work to build the organisational capacity of a network of community groups through focused training sessions. They provide basic education and psychosocial support to orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) from early childhood to college, teach entrepreneurial skills, and train youth as peer educators - all with the intention of developing a network of effective community youth leaders. The educational programmes in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment and sustainable agriculture at the G.R.A.C.E. Research and Resource Center in Nanyuki are meant to benefit community members, especially people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWAs) and youth.
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PULSE Poll
Do you agree or disagree?
Government agencies, international organisations, and donor agencies have lost sight of the power and relevance of traditional and folk media.
[For context, please see The Drum Beat #393.]
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Please participate in a DISCUSSION on the above topic through May 31 2007 within the Drum Beat Chat forum. Click here!
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