Hand in hand with the audience you can change much
Sylvia Muteteli
Learning Route Champion
Expertise: Radio Soap opera programmes development, communication, BCC communication and social mobilization - Belonging organization URUNANA DC
Organization: Urunana Development Communication
LR Best practice: Communication for behavioural change through radio soap opera: Land’O Lake and URUNANA DC experience
Contact Sylvia:umuteteliwamutsinzi@yahoo.co.uk; info@urunana.org
Webpage: www.urunanadc.org
URUNANA was initiated as a Health Communication vehicle to tackle key women reproductive health issues that were identified through research conducted in Rwanda in 1997.
Sylvia is among the core team of staff that initiated Urunana in 1998. This first Radio Soap Opera in Rwanda for the first time broke the classic linear of single story-telling approach to radio soap opera. Urunana innovate is the typical way of communication on two ways: on the format, in fact the Soap Opera tells several stories at the same time thus reflecting what happens in real life and use the characters to represent the target audience.
URUNANA Radio Soap Opera came in to break the silence on reproductive and sexual health which has been culturally taken as a taboo. At the very beginning and over the time, Urunana continued to integrate more and more messages on health, such as safe motherhood, ante natal and post natal consultations, youth and sexuality, family planning, HIV /AIDS, VCT, PMTCT, nutrition and many more social challenging issues which have direct or indirect influence on its target group, the rural women of reproductive age and youth.
While Urunana was initially criticized by Rwandan Cultural Royals, it gradually gained remarkable and reputable name and is now a brand of Rwandans and Kinyarwanda-Kirundi speaking, a reference for vital health, social and development attributes. It hence has a high listenership and following by a great number of people on Radio BBC, Radio Rwanda in Rwanda, Radio 10 and the entire Great Lakes Region and globally online.
Sylvia, in her various roles as audience researcher, marketing and public relations and project manager has been one of the key staff that took part in the process in the initiation, promotion and implementation of this unique program, methodologically and also in dealing with the partnership with private and public sectors. Urunana Development is a Civil Society organizations specialise in Social Behaviour change communication (SBCC) and uses Edutainment approach. "Our communication channels to mainstream these powerful messages are mainly Radio productions and stage performance".
Her work has mainly contributed to the development of concepts; she is part of Urunana Production team and follows up on project implementation activities.
Urunana being an edutainment and audience driven in nature, it hat balances a blend of entertainment and Education with a suspense that generates interest to track the next program. This kind of communication offers an advantage of increasing the audience’s belief that people in similar circumstances can learn vicariously and model positive characters. Such entertaining and educative programmes positively reinforce beliefs and behaviours compatible with public health goals.
In 2014 URUNANA DC in partnership with LAND O LAKES/Rwanda Dairy Competitiveness Program II (RDCPII), on USAID funding, started the implementation of a communication aimed at, Awareness Creation towards Improved Nutrition through Increased consumption of Milk and Dairy products in Rwanda (ACINIM). This was in response to the high levels of malnutrition that was widespread among children under five years, expectant as well as lactating mothers. Hence this program was to raise awareness among the Rwandan population and to increase knowledge, improve attitude and behaviour towards milk consumption.
URUNANA DC collaboration, commenced with orientation and stakeholder workshops to clearly understand and grasp well all the required information, gather and review all available information and consult all relevant stakeholders were brought together and explained in depth the nutritional benefits of milk, its content, what it requires produce quality and quantity milk as well as milk handling practices that are required to maintain the standards of milk and failure to keep up the standard leads to milk contamination.
Urunana Production team had clear understanding on the partner intentions and went on to develop the messages to promote positive behaviour and challenge problems that hinder consumption of milk as well as identified myth and misconceptions.
The next stage was proceeding with pre production (Content and storylines) and other usual production activities to inform production. The major ones are audience Surveillances and rural familiarisation. Audience surveillance is carried out every 2 months, to pre test the upcoming messages and post test the previous messages and stories in order to evaluate the audience appreciation of the developed episodes and get inspiration for new ones – always aligned with the reality.
Both rural familiarisation and audience surveillance facilitate Urunana Production Team on the following:-
Understanding the reality and the problem faced by our target group, we also get to know how appropriate the language used in the stories by different age segment.
Whether the messages depicted are understood and accessible
Get new ideas to impart to the set of characters within the soap opera to mainstream the messages. Story characters are developed on the basis of real context and real behaviour to facilitate identification with the audience “see somebody he/she knows in those characters” around them.
Positive changes habits and behaviour have been observed directly related to the messages raised in the radio soap opera.Incredible testimonies on the influence of messages depicted are obtained from audience feedback through email, sms, and face book. More audience reactions are obtain during live performances in the community outreaches by the prominent actors and actress of Urunana Radio soap Opera. Since this exercise attracts a huge audience and enhances interaction with listeners, quiz session is immediately set aside to gauge message retention after stage performance.
Sylvia personally learnt a lot on the significance of milk complementary to other diet to improve family nutrition, nutritional content of Milk, what a farmer need to know to get good milk production in terms of quality and quantity milk. She just drunk milk and had a feeling that children have to drink milk to grow well but she now learnt a lot a lot concerning the nutritional benefits of milk in child growth, strengthening of bones and its important role in curbing malnutrition.
Why do you consider this achievement as most important?
At the beginning we could not believe that the milk consumption could be a problem at all and that farmers were producing milk but not consuming it. During this project implementation we found out that some farmers sale almost all the milk without leaving any milk for family consumption, while other leave little and dilute it with water for the entire family to drink especially children, we realised it was a problem. Some farmers are found to be keeping cows to obtain composite manure to improve their Agriculture produce. From such behaviours we came to understand the causes and the magnitude of the problem and the effect it creates and we are able to advocate for improved diet complemented by milk daily, where all farmers need to act responsibly, to set aside enough milk for the family before selling to reduce the rates of stunting among children under five and improve nutritional problems in general.
We can tell that we were able to influence positive change basing on evidence based testimonies obtained in the immediate evaluations conducted after stage performances and other written feedback (emails, face book and sms). We are able to tell that our program is having a powerful positive effect on the individuals and families behaviour in accepting and introducing more balanced, diversified diets’’.
I consider this as the most important achievement because; while we communicate for behaviour change at the same time we also change our own behaviours.
Sylvia Key skills and competences: Community Mobilization and Empowerment, Marketing, Public Relations, Passion for the work, Dialogue facilitation/ Stakeholders engagement with different groups including farmers, local authorities, national authorities, and program and project coordinators. This is a kind of community based intervention in key learning areas of agriculture, health and education, but it reflects national intervention in project program coordination, management and technical assistance to farmers and professional expertise.
Capacity development was done through workshop facilitation to opinion leaders and civil society rural area.
