Where Mothers and Children Are Inspired by Stories of Love and Tragedy

With its goal to protect the lives of children, Ouro Negro (Black Gold) in Mozambique is a national entertainment-education (EE) radio drama designed by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Radio Mozambique, PCI Media Impact, and the World Food Program as Facts for Life (FFL)'s flagship communication programme. (See Related Summaries, below, for more information on Black Gold and FFL.) UNICEF contracted Drexel University to conduct in-depth impact and process evaluation activities, with support by GfK Intercampus as a local research partner. These activities aim to answer two overarching questions: "Was the programme effective?" and "What behaviour and social changes can be attributed to Ouro Negro?" In addition to impact of programme year one (a final evaluation was slated for late 2016), this report explores the project design and evaluation framework and their theoretical grounding in the social ecological model, which considers the complex interplay of personal and environmental factors that determine individual and collective behaviours.

Ouro Negro aims to reach over 1.5 million people - especially women aged 15-35 - with compelling stories and serve as a communication platform integrating priority areas of education, nutrition (including infant and young children feeding), hygiene and sanitation, HIV prevention, maternal and child health, and prevention of violence and child marriage. During the pilot phase, two different drama styles were tested, including a more serious style that mimicked that of popular Brazilian dramas and a comedy approach similar to the popular Mozambican theatre groups. The comedy style was identified as the most promising for the context. "Role models in Ouro Negro are not interesting because of who they are or what they have achieved. They are interesting because of how they learned to achieve and the mistakes they have made in the learning process on their way to their goal. The major strength of the drama is that the audience creates an emotional link with the characters up to the point to perceive them as family members or close friends that share their experiences and life lessons."

Contrary to many other drama productions, Ouro Negro does not write episodes, but stories. The stories are then sliced-up and packaged into episodes for radio broadcast. Each episode contains 4 story lines. This set-up allows Ouro Negro to single out stories, and the addressed health issues within a story, and use them in other formats, like community theatre. Life skills are cross-cutting over all stories and include knowledge of a relevant theme, having an opinion about that knowledge, having courage and self-esteem, and knowing how to communicate opinions, negotiate positions, and create strategic alliances and partnerships - whether in business, politics, or the family. Ouro Negro and its supplementary programmes, like interactive call-in shows, are designed to create and fuel debate. Ouro Negro originally planned to broadcast 84 episodes a year on Radio Mozambique (RM), but is airing each episode twice and not only on RM national radio but also on 9 out of 10 of RM's provincial stations, 58 community radio stations, and 2 commercial broadcasters.

To assess season one (42 episodes), first, a quantitative baseline arm utilised survey research with a population-based, longitudinal, pre-post panel design. Drexel interviewed 2,250 women ages 15-34 in 5 provinces prior to the launch. Because some respondents will not listen to the programme regularly (or at all), these respondents will become non-listeners at endline (November 2016).

The evaluation found that approximately 25%-30% of radio listeners 15+ have been already exposed to the drama, with approximately 1.2-1.4 million people listening to each episode. UNICEF's SMS-Biz data revealed a 25% listenership across youth, with a high in Zambezia Province (42%). Some 50% of listeners regularly follow the great majority of new episodes every week. The audience satisfaction is high (90%), with some 56% of the respondents reporting strongly liking Ouro Negro, followed by 34% of respondents liking the drama. Some 43% of respondents reported discussing Ouro Negro with other people. Of these respondents, 67% stated that they had discussed the topics covered in Ouro Negro; respondents were most likely to discuss topics with their friends and neighbours (56%). About 29% listened alone to the programme, but a considerable amount listened with family members (67%), most of them spouses, and about 12% tuned in with friends and neighbours. The most common message discussed with others was "keeping children in school," followed by "eating healthy foods," "vaccinating children," "hand washing with soap," "preventing HIV/AIDS," and "registering the birth of children".

Many of the listeners participating in the rapid audience survey (70%) reported behaviour change, and 44% knew at least one other person who had changed a behaviour - most often, a friend or neighbour. Results show that most self-behaviour change was in the "Other" category (26%), which included items, such as general change in behaviour, disease prevention, and following Ouro Negro messages.

Results from key informant interviews with 16 staff members provided insights on strengths and challenges. The most often listed strengths include the solid M&E framework, partnerships and relationships formed as part of the project, and participation by key stakeholders. The most often listed challenges include the need for improved materials and documents on the purpose and objectives of the programme, and finding agreement between the technical experts and creative team. This report also notes that, though Mozambique has a rich theatre tradition, even when it comes to EE theatre, writing for a successful EE radio drama requires an additional skill set. A radio drama script has to be final before recording and relies only on sounds; finding the talent and balance between creative and technical requirements is thus an ongoing challenge. Another challenge relates to breaking down the language barrier. Ouro Negro is a Portuguese language EE production. While Portuguese is the official language in Mozambique, and the most widely understood, it is only the fourth most spoken language in households. Thus, when it comes to dialogue and debate apart from the one-way communication process of the drama itself, Ouro Negro has developed a three-fold approach: (i) Ouro Negro provides guides for call-in shows that local (community) radio stations can use to start a dialogue among their audiences about the topics raised by the drama; 2) Ouro Negro provides the thematic stories, dialogues, and recordings to local theatre groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to make community theatre in local languages and promote the debate in their communities; and 3) Ouro Negro is actively looking for trans-frontier partners to produce Ouro Negro in Chichewa and Shona.

"These first results demonstrate two key success factors for lasting impact. Ouro Negro managed to build high and loyal listenership and evokes interpersonal communication amongst listeners and non-listeners. As a next step, UNICEF and PCI Media Impact will implement a multi-media communication strategy that continues to deepen and broaden listenership and debate."

Click here for the 11-page report in PDF format.