Jerome Mukeshimana lives in Gasabo district. He says that Umurage ("Heritage for a Better Future") radio serial drama has helped him understand how couples should find a common ground when it comes to family planning debates.
He says: "What I learned and liked much from Umurage Season 3 is the story about Koffi and Teta; as a father and a married person, the message encourages couples to go for family planning and communicate better which is sometimes difficult especially with us men.”
According to him, the message he gets is that as a husband, he needs to for instance sit with his wife to agree on the number of children they should have, instead of dictating just because one is a man.
Umurage 3 and many other seasons including Umurage 2 have been produced under the partnership of Population Media Center (PMC), Umurage Communication for Development (UmC), the Ministry of Health through Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC), and other partners from both public and private institutions.
PMC is a US-based, International Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that specializes in entertainment-education, whereas UmC is a Rwandan NGO based in Kigali, which strives to promote positive behavior change around social, economic and health issues, by the use of effective communication strategies.
Umurage 3 was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through Society for Family Health (SFH Rwanda), the Ministry of Health through Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC), Global Fund, and Swiss Cooperation.
Umurage 3 was a 54-episode radio serial drama aired from November 2018 through May 2019 in Kinyarwanda, one of Rwanda’s official languages.
It addressed issues on Sexual Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV), couple communication, Antenatal /postnatal care and Malaria.
On the other-hand, Umurage 2 was a 156-episode radio serial drama that was broadcast from August 2017 to July 2018 on eight radio stations.
The drama addressed the themes of child protection, youth sexual and reproductive health, child protection and nutrition, and Sexual and Gender-Based violence (SGBV). The drama was produced in collaboration with UNICEF, PMC, the Ministry of Health and other partners.
Mukamana Claudine, one of the best performing students in School debates on Sexual reproductive Health and child rights, organised by UmC in collaboration with SWISS Coop and other stakeholders.
Another listener of Umurage drama series Marie-Jeanne Dusengimana from Rulindo district also shares how it changed her life for the better.
She said: "Let me use Diane’s life in the drama, Diane used to have unprotected sex and suffered from sexually transmitted diseases after Kivumbi had dumped her in a trench. She was later advised by Gogo to stop having unprotected sex.
"Gogo was also concerned if Diane had gone for treatment [for HIV] and she replied how it was still tricky because she (Diane) was still seeing Kivumbi.”
"What I learned from this scenario is that I need always to encourage my friends to have protected sex in case they fail to abstain,” said Martine Kaduhiriye, a youth who lives in Gasabo district.
The positive impacts of the serial dramas in numbers
According to Jean-Bosco Kwizera, Executive Director of Umurage Communication for Development, radio serial dramas have shown good results in terms of positively changing behavior of the society.
He said: "Based on research, most of the societal challenges like stunting, children’s right abuse and many others are caused by ignorance. Before composing serial dramas, we consult available research findings to know apparent problems and causes, and then compose relevant educative series around that.”
"According to outcomes of our recent research, these serial dramas are creating positive behavioral change in the society. We are thrilled about that and thankful to all our partners for making this possible,” he added.
To evaluate the impact of the Radio Serial Drama (RSD) on knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of the target audience, PMC contracts independent research firms to conduct nationally representative cross-sectional surveys immediately after broadcast conclusion.
Findings show that Umurage 2 had a rate of over 71 percent listenership on different radio stations, with about 3.5 million listeners that have heard about it both from rural and urban areas confirming how the drama positively changed their lifestyle.
The drama registered success by reaching an estimated 1.1 million loyal listeners every week, from June 2017 to June 2018.
More findings about Umurage’s positive impact
An independent Rwandan research firm (KLS) also conducted a nationally representative, cross-sectional end-line survey in July and August 2018.
The survey sample was representative of the target population and stratified by province.
The total sample on people of reproductive age for the Umurage evaluation was 3,373 through interviews (52 percent women, 48 percent men).
The greatest impact concerned attitudes about disciplining children findings revealed that listeners of Umurage were 2.5 times more likely than non-listeners to think that a parent is not justified in hitting his/her children for any one of four reasons: (1) if they perform poorly in school because of doing household chores, (2) if they disobey their parents, (3) if they are impolite to their parents, and (4) if they brought shame to the family.
For the youth sexual and reproductive health indicators, results found that listeners of Umurage were 1.7 times more likely than non-listeners to have discussed risk behaviors related to early pregnancy with their peers in the last six months.
For SGBV indicators, listeners of Umurage were 2.4 times more likely than non-listeners to think that a husband is not justified in hitting or beating his wife if she neglects the children.
Umurage drama has continued to pass on messages to listeners related to existing issues in society, including the COVID 19 and hygiene, family planning, HIV/AIDS, SGBV and positive masculinity.
In a recent development, UmC in collaboration with Population media Center (PMC) launched a television series ‘Ipfundo series’ (also on You Tube), that provides lessons about the above mentioned themes.