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Straight Talking
Be inspired: Breaking taboos with a newspaper that tackles sex.
‘Family planning fights poverty’, ‘Life is more valuable than money’, ‘Safer sex is respect’, ‘Less HIV in Karamoja’, ‘When Dad came home from the Rebels’. These are no ordinary headlines. Not surprising then that they come from no ordinary paper.
Straight Talk, founded by Cathy Watson in 1993 is a health and development communication NGO working to promote positive behavioural change in young people in Uganda. With over 11 million print publications a year, 56 radio programmes a week and materials versioned into 14 local languages, no surprise either that Straight Talk is making some behavioural change waves across the country.
From their headquaters in Kampala, Cathy Watsom co-ordinates the mass communications with a team of over 100 young employees. She speaks with the pace of a firework and the grace of a gem. Her welcome is immediate. “Our studios are just in here”, she says, pointing to the custom built radio offices manned by a crew of fresh, eager faces, “and through here is where we answer all the letters we get in”, she says passing a room which looks more like the general post office where some 40,000 personal letters are dispatched from it each year, “and here are some of our publications”, as she hands me an unexpectedly large batch of the newspapers, each with colourful photos and graphics, and each with the unusual headlines.
Straight Talk’s main paper, aimed at a youth audience, has been a real taboo breaker in the country since first going to print in 1993. At the time HIV prevalance rates were on the rampage and Uganda was one of the hardest hit by the epidemic.”No one was taking about the issue to young people” Cathy explained. With a new sexual generation every five years, she knew that if sex education was not addressed the situation was likely to worsen, quickly. And so the idea emerged for a youth focused publication which would be a space for discussion and information for young people about issues which effect them. “We wanted to encourage open dialogue and participation with young people”.
With a background as a foreign coresspondent for the likes of the BBC and The Guardian, and with a husband as editor of the main national daily newspaper The New Vision, Cathy had the skills and connections to get a publication off the ground. “UNICEF approched me with the idea for a newsletter which would be aimed at youth”, explained Cathy, “but I hate newsletters. What you need, I told them, is a newspaper which would really talk about issues and engages a young audience”.
From her kitchen table Cathy put the first edition together along with the help of a recent graduate in graphic design. With her husband’s links in printing, she then managed to get the paper printed at cost price and The New Vision agreed to distribute it as an insert. Going national immediately the first issue drew thousands of responses, lending her momentum to continue. This was ’93, and for the next couple of years Cathy was juggling a monthly edition of Straight Talk with her freelance writing work as she travelled back and forth to Burundi and Rwanda reporting for the British media during the height of the genocide. Plus there was also the juggle of raising two young kids.
But the letters and feedback kept coming and so, seeing the need, Straight Talk was formalised into an NGO and a full-time editor employed. From there it sprouted.
With thanks to the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund and Connect World for their generous support for this project.
Words and Images by Clare Mulvany
