Material Benefits for Clubs and Communities - Development Through Radio (DTR) Radio Listening Clubs, Zambia: Impact Evaluation Report

Objective 1: Enable clubs to bring material and social development to themselves and their communities

Material benefits for clubs and communities

The following list is probably not complete. It is drawn from discussions with some of the clubs and with the radio programme producer, but records have not been kept documenting all the broadcast programmes, their topics, respondents and outcomes.

The benefits gained have been for the communities, not for the clubs. The clubs have several times requested assistance for their income-generating activities, but to date no assistance has materialised. A particularly serious effort was made to obtain access to small business loans: the Clubs' local coordinator visited the Executive Director of a microfinance NGO, ECLOF (Ecumenical Loan Fund), in Lusaka to discuss the possibility. However, ECLOF could not respond because there is no locally-based intermediary body to manage the loans.

The Club members and president are disappointed that the principal benefits they had initially hoped for from the project have not been forthcoming. However, there was a striking change between this evaluation visit and a previous one eighteen months earlier. Then, requests for tools to help the clubs – often based on quite unrealistic hopes of what NGOs might provide – seemed to form the content of most of the programmes that had been made and of the clubs' vision of what the project might achieve. This time, the value of the project is seen much more broadly. Relatively few programmes seem to have been made requesting inputs specifically for the clubs, and complaints about the lack of responses were only occasionally voiced. The focus seems to have moved to benefits for the community, and discussion of social and political issues. The flow of material benefits received, and evident readiness of the communities to respond to discussions of social issues, has raised the status of the clubs and the project in the community and helped maintain commitment to it despite the disappointment.

To some extent the clubs and communities have gained the capacity to access funds and inputs from outside themselves. For instance, the Clubs coordinator visited the ECLOF office in Lusaka, and members of one club went to Lusaka to visit organisations such as the Society for Women with AIDS (SWAZ) which works on behalf of AIDS orphans. For some of the funds accessed, such as from ZAMSIF(Zambia Social Investment Fund), the communities had to submit proposals with budgets. So far, the Programme producer has played a key role in helping the communities do this, for instance suggesting a number of appropriate projects they could propose. Time will tell whether the communities can do it without his support. In other cases, assistance came because the producer was able to speak to highly-placed officials and ministers. Again, it remains to be seen whether a different producer would be able to mobilise the same level of influence, and whether this is necessary for the success of the project in gaining material benefits.

Social benefits

As mentioned above, through the course of the project social benefits have emerged and been recognised as a strong feature. It was not clear whether this was the result of a deliberate intervention by Panos, or whether it arose spontaneously from the clubs themselves. It began early on with a programme about use of condoms, after which the club concerned took on very explicitly a role as educators and promoters of community solutions to problems. (Whether one agrees with their solution or not is another question).

The social aspect of the programmes has grown because of the strong habit the clubs have developed of listening to and debating one another's programmes (in contrast to the situation of the clubs in Malawi evaluated a week later). Club members meet and listen together if they have a club radio set, or in the homes of one or two individuals if not. In this case, a few club members listen – in some cases delegated by the club – and report to the club when it meets later. The programmes are broadcast on Saturdays, and the clubs meet for discussion regularly on Mondays or Tuesdays. This habit of listening has built up over the course of the porject – at the time of the previous monitoring visit, the clubs were more interested in hearing themselves than anyone else. Intervention by Panos after that evaluation, to reiterate to the clubs the value of listening, probably contributed to this very significant change.

The listening habit is self-reinforcing: listening together as a club, followed by a good debate, produces more interesting topics and programmes for the next broadcast, which attracts more attentive listeners in the clubs and communities. The growing confidence of the clubs in their role as educators or mobilisers of their communities, and their growing skill in presenting complex debates and stating their views forcefully and clearly, must also contribute to making the programmes more stimulating and appealing.

Information

Sharing of information, from outside respondents and from the clubs themselves, is generally seen as one of the principal benefits of the programmes, both by the clubs and by members of the communities. A farmer explained the value of a method of learning which “brings understanding from the base, rather than somebody coming with an idea which may sound alien.” He recalled an experience of farmers' groups set up for the exchange of information, a project now apparently defunct. Another man pointed out that women often don't pay much attention to the radio, because they are busy with household chores, so in many households the man listens instead and afterwards explains what was broadcast to his wife. "Men should be encouraging women to pay particular attention when the programme comes on air, because in a rural area like this, women don't always have time – for instance to go to the clinic to learn about nutrition and their family's health."

Examples of information-sharing

a) A schoolteacher (male) cited one thing he particularly appreciated learning from Nyanga club, with input from the Ministry of Agriculture's Land Management and Conservation Farming Unit: "I listened to how women in one of the clubs are able to grow maize without applying chemical fertiliser. Prior to that I thought that to grow maize I needed to have chemical fertiliser, but from that day I was able to know that I can grow maize even without. In fact from that time I was stimulated to try, so I tried a small portion just by the riverside, and I was happy, having followed the procedure such as they said. I was able to grow – I was happy and satisfied with the yield." This information spreads beyond its initial audience: "At times we sell the surplus. Sometimes people come and demand to accompany us to the garden, and we tell them, ‘You see how our vegetables are coming out, without artificial means.'"

b) Programmes about nutrition and food preparation were high on the list of programmes spontaneously recollected by club and community members, and appear to have also struck chords with audiences across the country. Salamo club's programme about nutritious crops - soya, beans and sunflower - elicited requests from other clubs for more information: “Some of the groups approached us to get details about how they can make milk from soybeans and a beverage which is similar to coffee from ground soybeans.” Lessons in food preparation were the first benefit mentioned by a male farmer: “It's not always that the women are there to prepare food, and the man can learn something which he can apply when the wife is not there.“

c) The programme most frequently mentioned was Tazama's programme about HIV/AIDS prevention and the use of condoms. It stimulated a lot of discussion and a follow-up information initiative from an NGO and then from the club members themselves, and both the original programme and the club's follow-up were praised for the information they gave about how to avoid AIDS. Another programme (not mentioned during the evaluation meetings but of which there is a transcript) featured an HIV-positive woman speaking about living with AIDS.

d) A programme on Family Planning by Mununga club, with input from the Society for Family Health and the Planned Parenthood Association of Zambia, helped improve people's receptivity to the information on child spacing that was already available: “When the health workers were going round the villages trying to educate people, a lot of people were not interested, they didn't think it was important, but when it started coming from their fellow women, from the clubs, a lot of people now have got interested and have started following.” The respondent organisations also sent information leaflets for the club to distribute.

e) The perceived value of the radio programmes for health education is shown by the establishment of a new club, "Clinic”, by a group of young women living near Mpumba clinic. They see a role for themselves as health educators, and hope to make programmes “about health, health education, to teach people nutrition and how they can look after their children….We will be drawing a lot of knowledge from the health worker, and also if we can be availed of booklets, for instance about nutrition, we will be able to read them.”

f) Information about law (abortion, inheritance) and political procedures (voter registration) was also valued and stimulated a lot of discussion. In the case of abortion, the programme was in response to a disturbing event in the community; the family concerned were unhappy about the programme calling attention to their problems, but on the whole the community felt that the club had performed a service by addressing a subject that is not often discussed so openly.

g) Some community members attribute to the project a raised awareness of the value of information and education in general: “Children never used to be keen about going to school, but of late, because of what the parents talked about on radio they feel very encouraged and each one of them wants to go to school.”

Innovative solutions

The programmes have a significant effect in opening the minds of individuals to accept or experiment with new ideas: for instance, the examples of low-input agriculture, family planning, foods and food preparation mentioned above.

They have also stimulated some new community actions. One community built and established a community school. Another established a voluntary school for orphans, as a result of a radio programme about the problem of AIDS orphans who can't pay school fees. The community identified a volunteer teacher and premises – in this case, her own house. The programme officials (from the ministry of education) approved her and the premises, then provided her with some training, books and a radio – the curriculum is broadcast by ZNBC. It is to be hoped that the community gives the teacher and school enough support to sustain it. It has 21 pupils, and according to the retired headmistress who is president of the clubs, seems to provide a sound basic 3Rs education.

Overall, the DTR project seems to have stimulated a recognition, in the clubs themselves and widely in the communities, of the valuable role women can play as educators. The clubs see their role not just as a channel for information from other sources, but as passing on their own experience and as reflecting on and proposing solutions from within the community – a role that women no doubt played before, but which has been given more formality and status by the radio project. Sometimes the habit of discussing together leads women to new ideas: “A lot of men are preoccupied just with work like farming and so on,… Women are more advanced because they sit together and share ideas. One example is the segregation between men and women practised by men – because they are not able to sit together and share ideas and cope with new trends - that's why they are backward.”

At other times, the conclusions the women arrive at are conservative reiterations of traditional values, which may not be so directly valuable for problem solving: “The group that came [to give Tazama club more information about HIV/AIDS] was from the Copper Belt, they were encouraging the use of condoms. But from the village point of view, we are against that, we think that encourages promiscuity among men, so when we went round the other clubs to share the information, we were emphasising abstinence - trying to correlate that with the traditional beliefs, because in the past that was very strongly emphasised.” But some of the clubs are perceiving the value of being more inclusive in their discussions, which might open the way for more new ideas. On the question of whether the project should be opened to include men and youth, one club member said: “Looking at the youth in this community, the first thing is they should change their attitudes, A lot of them are very playful, they are not constructive. But the women's club will try and see how they can incorporate them. There is a feeling that if and when the programme resumes they should be given an opportunity to talk about a few of their concerns.”

Changes in social relations

Improvement in gender relations was mentioned spontaneously by the chief as one of the benefits of the project. He ascribed it to the fact that “men can now hear what's going on in the clubs.” So many informants commented on the respect men have for the women's ideas as expressed in the programmes that it seems reasonable to conclude that this is an improvement attributable to the project: one man observed, “Even in our homes, men are now saying that what the women are saying is what the men should also follow.” Women's space for talking also has a negative side, however, at least for men: one man complained that the Tazama club women, in their programme about the use of condoms, “wanted to put blame on men. If men were there, they could have also given reasons why the whole blame should not be placed on them. But if we only allow women, they will always be blaming men, blaming men. There must be that sharing...”

The clubs are seen as having a powerful role in exposing faults. One club member said she had heard a lot of men saying to people who have done something they think is wrong, “You know, the women will talk about this when they record their radio programme.” Their capacity to raise in public issues that are not often talked about, such as AIDS and abortion, is also greatly valued.

On occasions, community members feel the programmes have produced immediate change in behaviour. A male member of a Parent Teachers' Association said, “Women talk about real life issues, such as how people are supposed to live in the home in harmony, and it has worked wonders, where some people have actually changed attitutde after listening to the women doing the counselling in the programme. There was a real-life situation of that nature here...”

A male teacher was emphatic that the programme on inheritance problems had had a visible impact on the “rampant” custom of taking the deceased's property from his/her surviving spouse: “Listening to the radio programmes from these women, it became sorrowful that the one remaining literally had nothing, added to the other problems which was very bad. The programme came to enlighten the public that what we should do is become sympathisers rather than destroyers. This trend has been curtailed, cut, let me say probably it is gone to a stop... As they attend the funeral, people are relating according to what they have understood from the radio, now taking that picture to the actual scene, to say, ‘Look, this has been talked about, what we have to do is to adhere to what the programme tells us'. So this has become a lesson, very effective indeed.” (It is worth noting that many listeners drew an opposite lesson from this programme – evidence, perhaps, that it contained plenty of objective information as well as emotional appeals).