They Had a Dream: Aymarans Seize the Airways to Promote Health and Development in Bolivia's El Alto

This paper explores the entertainment-education strategies undertaken by Radio Atipiri, a fully Aymaran-run radio station, in El Alto, Bolivia. The paper seeks to provide a window into the way radio storytelling is reducing HIV/AIDS prevalence rates, delaying pregnancy among teens, and getting more people treated in clinics. As detailed here, local people have taken control of the airwaves and are telling their own stories, their own way.

The Center for Education and Communication for Indigenous Communities and Peoples (CECOPI, by its Spanish acronym), through Radio Atipiri and in partnership with PCI Media Impact, carries out capacity-building workshops, and has established its own premises, which houses the station's broadcasting and production equipment, as well as offices and rooms for meetings and workshops. In the words of CECOPI's 36-year-old director: "Radio Atipiri's goal is not to impose a dominant culture from above, as the large commercial media outlets do. It records, feeds, and broadcasts culture from below: the diverse, multi-lingual, vibrant, dynamic culture of El Alto."

At the start of the piece, an El Alto actress describes what happened to the character she plays on Looking for Love, which focuses on HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health. The parents of this character, Jessica, were busy with work and did not notice that she was frequenting dodgy bars that unethically cater to teens. There, she met two men who seemed nice but then took her to the woods and raped and killed her. The scriptwriter explains: "At Radio Atipiri we pluck stories right out of the fabric of El Alto life. It took their daughter's death for her parents to realize they should have simply talked with Jessica. By then it was too late." As noted here, Raymunda listened to Jessica's story with her parents. "After we listened, my parents started talking to me. Pretty much for the first time. Jessica's tragedy is what changed our family."

Other Radio Atipiri soaps - In a Woman's Name and Cool Kids - are described here.

According to the CECOPI director: "A big problem we've identified is a lack of feeling and communication between parents and their kids. Kids...feel their parents don't love them. That's why they 'look for love' outside the family and get pregnant so young."

The scriptwriter, Bosco, described the approach for addressing this problem, through the words of the article's author: He (Bosco) "demonstrate[d] a handwritten 'values grid' on poster paper on the wall. He explained that one positive value they tried to get across was communication with parents and the negative corollary was lack of communication and estrangement. They took these values right out of daily life in El Alto. Then, in teams that included teenagers...they'd craft storylines with characters embodying those contradictory values coming into conflictual real life situations."

The power of the "invisibility" of the radio is cited here as being strategically crucial. That is, the issues are "displaced to the third person, where they can still be felt emotionally, but with enough distance to make them safe to discuss. Radio is also able to stimulate, through the single sense of sound, all five senses, increasing impact. Moreover, the adolescents not only co-write but also act in and host the programs, making use of their youthful energy and creativity to positively influence their listening peers. Additionally, as psychologist Albert Bandura's influential social learning theory suggests, teenagers themselves taking the lead on projects like Looking for Love allows them to serve as peer role models, influencing other adolescents."

One programme component highlighted here as key to encourage change is partnering with and promoting the use of clinics and other local services. That way, it is hoped, the programme goes beyond a change in knowledge and attitudes to a change in practice. Specifically, Radio Atipiri, CECOPI, and Media Impact have expanded the initiative beyond participants, listeners, and their families by reaching out to health clinics, encouraging listeners to use them. The radio dramas are also used as part of sexual education programmes in area high schools. According to an independent evaluation, 40% of listeners had participated at community events promoted in the radio show and 20% requested services at the local health centre, as recommended on the show. Other partners include the El Alto mayor's office, a coalition of groups called the "Anti-violence Network", and neighbouring municipal governments.

Reportedly, "[i]ndependent evaluations show Radio Atipiri radio soaps are impacting behavior. Consistent with the Mexico and Tanzania cases, of 340 Looking for Love and Cool Kids listeners surveyed, 65% recommended a positive value to a friend or family that they learned through the radio drama. And perhaps most telling - given El Alto's lack of parent-teen communication, which contributes to isolation and negative behaviors - the number of listeners who reported talking with their parents about sexuality in the last six months more than doubled compared to a pre-show baseline."

Editor's note: To request a full copy of the document via email, please contact Danforth Preston at dpreston@mediaimpact.org