Community-based Responses to HIV/AIDS in South Africa: An Evaluation of a Children’s Radio Programme

Abstract

Children community radio programmes are among the very few programmes in Southern Africa that seek to raise HIV/AIDS knowledge and awareness on children. These programmes are designed to enable children to learn useful life skills as well as contribute to broader public awareness on issues facing Southern African children in the context of poverty and the HIV epidemic. The idea of 'child-participation' forms the core of children radio programmes. It locates the child as having a fundamental responsibility in the response to HIV/AIDS. The assumption is that children need to be capacitated with HIV/ AIDS information to build awareness. This article focuses on the results of a process evaluation of a children radio programme conducted in South Africa. The purpose of the evaluation was to gather information related to programme implementation and performance. For this evaluation, qualitative methods comprising semi-structured interviews, observations and document analysis were used. In this evaluation, inductive thematic analysis was employed to establish how the children's radio programme was being implemented. The results of the evaluation showed high levels of implementation fidelity.