The Drum Beat 262 - East and South East Asia

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This issue of The Drum Beat explores action, thinking, and resources specific to the East and South East Asia region on a variety of development issues.

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EXPERIENCES

1. Small Voices - East Timor & Indonesia
This community media network was designed to enable those who use the dominant media as their major source of information to gain more direct insight into grassroots movements within the South East Asian region, and to encourage a greater understanding and awareness of local issues. Another purpose of the programme is to strengthen the networks between community media so that information can be shared more easily, thereby bridging cultural divides.
Contact Marni Cordell marni@smallvoices.org

2. Step Forward with Understanding - Bangkok, Thailand
This project focuses on school sex education curricula developed through teacher training and promoting collaboration among administrators, parents, teachers, and NGOs. "Step Forward with Understanding" consisted of 14 50-minute-long sessions conducted once per week for students (Grade 8) in 30 schools in Bangkok. The curriculum development process focussed on encouraging children to learn about sexuality in its broader aspects, rather than just bodily functions, hygiene, and sexual acts. Examples of topics covered were: nature, safety, culture, emotional engagement, problematic consequences, readiness of both people, and desire.
Contact pathbangkok@path.org

3. Rural Internet Information Centres - China
China's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are engaged in an effort to provide information services to the rural poor in China. Based on the quality of their applications and ability to finance their share of the project, 5 counties were selected for this pilot effort. Local government officials at every level of the project are actively involved in its implementation. At the county level, local leaders provide guidance and mobilise experts from different sectoral departments for regular advisory meetings on, for example, Internet-based information needed by the county. At the village and town levels, governments provide staff to work at the centres. In some counties, the government departments themselves are among the heaviest users of the services.
Contact Daniel Wang daniel.wang@undp.org

4. SIAGA Campaigns - Indonesia
This 5-year safe motherhood programme, called the Maternal & Neonatal Health (MNH) Program, involves several public awareness campaigns including Warga SIAGA (Alert Citizen), Suami SIAGA (Alert Husband), Bidan SIAGA (Alert Midwife), and Desa SIAGA (Alert Village). Communication interventions focus on improving birth preparedness behaviours of couples, community members, and midwives. The campaigns use radio, television, print materials, special events, and training programmes to reach Indonesian families and communities with the concept of being alert ("siaga") for emergencies during childbirth. For each of the audiences, MNH has identified behaviours that make a person "siaga".
Contact Anne Palmer apalmer@jhuccp.org

5. Men on the Elimination of Violence Against Women - The Phillipines
This programme, which sought to involve men in efforts to eliminate violence against women (EVAW), included a series of workshops in 3 cities in Nov and Dec, 2001. Its objectives included: selecting strategic segments of the adult male population for involvement in the prevention/elimination of VAW; engaging these groups in the creation of awareness regarding the issue of VAW and in planning local actions; promoting understanding of EVAW among the broader population in order to bolster the actions of the identified male groups. The programme addressed men, particularly members of the police force and elected male village heads ("barangay chairmen").
Contact Virgilio Pernito Bod@pspi.org

6. Punishment of Love - Cambodia
A 12-week integrated, multimedia HIV/AIDS prevention campaign featuring a television soap opera. The campaign's main communication objectives were to stimulate discussion of HIV/AIDS among relatives and friends, improve personal risk assessment skills, encourage care and compassion for people living with HIV/AIDS, and promote social acceptance of condom use, particularly between regular partners. The intended audience was 15-49 year-old Cambodians, with a focus on youth, couples, and sex workers and their partners. Radio spots and newspaper advertisements complemented the TV series by repeating key messages. Posters, special promotional items, and a lucky draw sponsored by the private sector were also included in the campaign in an effort to encourage viewer loyalty.
Contact Jacqueline Devine jdevine@psi.org.kh

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PULSE POLL

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's Economic Adviser Jeffrey Sachs says that "African countries should refuse to repay their foreign debts."
[BBC News July 6 2004 - click here for the article]

Do you agree or disagree?

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STRATEGIC THINKING

7. Internet newspapers as Alternative Media The Case of OhmyNews in South Korea
by Cheon Young-Cheol
The author argues that "The emergence of the Internet provides people with a real opportunity to produce and deliver news at a reduced and affordable cost. For this reason, media power, which had been monopolized by capital and authority, is changing. The Internet newspaper is a fine example of how the Internet is changing the concept of media ownership."

8. Expanding Workplace HIV/AIDS Prevention Activities for a Highly Mobile Population: Construction Workers in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
by Dr. Vu Ngoc Bao, Dr. Philip Guest, Dr. Julie Pulerwitz, Dr. Le Thuy Lan Thao, Duong Xuan Dinh, Dr. Tran Thi Kim Xuyen, Dr. Ann Levin
Reveals that peer HIV/AIDS education is an effective and affordable way to reach highly mobile and migrant workers. The study involved assigning participants to either an Health Communicator (HC) or a Peer Education (PE) intervention programme. The HC educators were college-educated social workers and the PE educators were construction workers themselves. Research concerns included the impact young, dedicated, social workers (half were female) could have on a largely male construction worker population versus the concerns about whether construction workers could be capable educators and could be motivated to "stick with the programme".

9. Hip-Hop and Rock for Condoms Challenge Church
by Sonny Inbaraj
"Musicians in the predominately Catholic East Timor are taking their HIV/AIDS message directly to the people by circumventing official Church policy that bans the use of condoms."

10. Structural Adjustment in the Name of the Poor: The PRSP Experience in the Lao PDR, Cambodia and Vietnam
by Jenina Joy Chavez Malaluan & Shalmali Guttal
This paper provides an overall critique of the [Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers] PRSP framework, process and content. The paper draws from experiences in the Lao PDR, Cambodia and Vietnam, a review of relevant documents and other studies of World Bank-IMF lending programmes.

11. Singapore Blazes Trail in Anti-Smoking Drive
According to this article, by August 2004, Singapore will be the first country in Asia to show graphic pictures that warn smokers about the health risks they are taking. The new law requires that cigarette packets will have to have up to 50 percent of its front and back cover showing any one of 6 pictures that the Singapore Government has chosen to appear on a rotational basis.

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MATERIALS

12. Stopping a Killer: Combatting Tuberculosis in South & South East Asia
edited by Afsan Chowdhury, Esther Griffiths, Bhim Subba
This book is a collection of reports from various parts of Asia that address the problem faced by TB control programmes; 'hard-to-reach' groups that have little motivation for seeking treatment, ensuring full treatment among mobile population groups, tackling the disease in overcrowded refugee camps, prisons and urban slums, developing programmes for people scattered by conflicts, overcoming inherent gender-bias and empowering women for active work in communities, responding to the new menace of multi-drug resistant form of the disease, and TB among children.

13. Toolkit for HIV Prevention Among Mobile Populations
by Eileen Darby, Bruce Parnell, Kyi Minn
Jointly prepared by the Asian Development Bank, World Vision International, and the Burnet Institute, this is a toolkit - written in Chinese - for managers and implementers of HIV prevention programmes in locations where there is an association between mobility and HIV vulnerability. It outlines how HIV transmission can be prevented among mobile people as well as among people who live in stable communities affected by mobility.

14. Voices & Viewpoints: When Youth Make News
The 14 news features compiled in this book are the result of a partnership between Inter Press Service (IPS) Asia-Pacific correspondents and young students in 7 East and South-east Asian countries. For one month, each IPS correspondent and his or her intern worked together to gather data and conduct interviews (many with children and young people), but wrote their stories separately. The book is divided into 7 sections, according to the team's country.

15. Cambodia HIV/AIDS Self-Care Series
This series consists of 4 books written and illustrated specifically for the People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) audience. Using a visual approach, the books provide practical advice for PLHA and for individuals caring for HIV-positive friends or family members.

16. Poverty Alleviation in Mountain Areas of China: Proceedings of the International Conference held November 11-15 2002 in Chengdu, China
The 20 chapters in this book cover a broad range of topics drawing on experiences from the Indian Himalayas and the mountains of Bhutan to illustrate methods of poverty alleviation that might be relevant in China.

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