Making a Difference: We Are All Affected

This programme used the medium of community radio to share information about HIV/AIDS with South African listeners and to stimulate discussion about related issues in local languages. The process began with Democracy Radio receiving background notes and key questions from Health-e, a news agency that produces news and in-depth analysis for the print and electronic media. The producers identified characters and subjects to interview, and then produced a 20-minute backbone programme on each of the project's 12 themes. Programmes for each theme were produced in 4 languages (separately; they are not translated), making a total of 48 programmes. The programme's themes included:

1. Positive living - Know your status
2. Family Ties - A truck driver comes home
3. Fighting fit - You are what you eat
4. Back to School - Teach your children well
5. Staying alive - Know your medicines
6. Gender bender - Bringing equality home
7. Work for all - At home and away
8. Growing together - What does it cost to be healthy?
9. People first - Democracy, delivery and the spirit of Ubuntu
10. Living together - Safe, sexy and supportive
11. Healing memories - Dealing with death
12. Embrace life - Life, love and the future

As part of the strategy of disseminating the programmes to local stations, the final programmes were delivered to Media Training Centre for Health (MTC) on CD. These were then sent to the National Community Radio Forum (NCRF) and the South African Community Radio Information Network (SACRIN) to be uploaded to satellite. The participating stations - Vukani (Cala, Eastern Cape), Naledi (Senekal, Free State), Riverside (Uppington, Northern Cape), KC (Paarl, Western Cape), Maputaland (Jozini, KZN) and TNG (Soshanguve, Gauteng) - then downloaded the programmes using their satellite links. The stations were required to broadcast each theme over a 4-week period. In the first week, a one-minute promotional spot summarising the programme's key point and acting as a "teaser" was aired. The main backbone programme followed in the second week. During the third week, the stations again played the teaser. In the last week of the month they broadcast a programme that they produced locally, which covered the same issues raised in the backbone programme.

As suggested by this final step in the process (community-radio-based production), the information that was shared is meant to be translated into local action. To stimulate this process, the participating stations listened to the programmes with community-based reference groups. It is through this group listening and exchange that the issues raised in the programme were discussed and ideas for local angles were pursued.

HIV/AIDS, Health, Rights.

Evaluation was viewed as an important part of the project. Baseline studies were carried out before the programming began, and more research was planned once all the themes were covered. The results of the evaluation were used to assess the success of the project and to inform any decisions about rolling out the project to other stations.