Straight talking Part Two
Youth media that tackles HIV, sex with a herdsman, being an orphan and much more.
Straight talking Part Two
Youth media that tackles HIV, sex with a herdsman, being an orphan and much more.
From the start the issues covered in Straight Talk have been both broad and deep. In the June issue of this year alone, topics included: HIV transmission, sex with a herdsman, reunions with fathers, being an orphan, gonorrhea, date rape, unwanted pregnancy and cervical cancer.
But Straight Talk is more than just sex education. Taking a holistic, integrated approach to health; mental, emotional and psychological issues are written about in open, fresh ways. “We are constantly getting feedback from young people, and so we are constanly developing”, says Cathy. Straight Talk is also more than just print materials. Weekly radio show are broadcast across the country in 14 languages. With a staggering 65-85% of young people listening in on a regular basis, this is pure bang for the buck territory. “If we could afford nothing else we would try to keep the radio show going”.
But the success of the paper and radio programmes led to spin offs, not cutbacks. The range of publications has expanded to include: Young Talk, a magazine for primary school students; Parent Talk, to engourage parents to discuss sex and health issues with their children; Teacher talk, promoting best practice educational methods in the classroom; and Tree Talk, raising enviromental awareness and distributed with free packets of seeds to schools.
The latter is the latest in the line of recruits into the Straight Talk fold. Uganda, as Cathy explained, has one of the fastest growing populations in the world but it also is fast consuming its supplies of wood. The tree planting scheme, with funds already secured for a million trees, hopes to reverese some of the detrimintal environmental trends of deforestation.
Given her early career the environmental twist to Cathy’s work is no major surprise. Born into an intellectual household in the United States, both parents university professors, Cathy started on the academic route with a degree in biology and Latin American studies at Princeton, later landing a job at the World Bank working in the environmental sector. Her focus was on ecological issues in the Amazon. But the place wasn’t for her, “I thought, ‘I’m not doing enough good here, and so instead I went and trained as a nurse in England. It was the most amazing culture shock to go from the glitz of the World Bank into a dingy nursing ward in England’.
Three years and a lot of hard work later, Cathy emerged but was still not totally content. “You see, I’ve always loved to write”. So pursuing that love she found herself writing nursing columns for The Guardian and The Times Health Supplement, followed by a stint as an editor with a nursing book publisher. It was around this time that she met her future husband, William, a journalist who was reporting on African affairs, including the situation in Uganda. His reporting led to a job offer to set up The New Vision, and accepting it, Cathy too found herself in Africa, taking up freelance journalism.
Looking back on her life, Straight Talk seems like an ideal marriage of Cathy’s medical and media experience but like any marriage, it hasn’t all been ruffle-free. “It’s just a huge amount of work. It never ends”, she comments in a rather hushed, slower voice. “But this epidemic is not sustainable at all. We are not really getting on top of it. We cannot stop”.
It somewhat frustrates her too that prevention and communication stratgies are not seen as favourably in the donor community as treatment. “Prevention is the slight poor cousin of treatment and care”, she explained. To her early intervention and educating people about the causes and consequence of HIV is as important, if not more, important than trying to solve the problem later.
So what keeps her going? “I think of my kids. They are going to have to deal with the impact of global warming and all these global challenges”. Which, for her, is one reason why behavioural change is so important. “I think there is too much emphais on lifestyle and materalism. But being successful can mean doing the right thing. And you can have fun doing the right thing. Get skills. Learn how to write. Learn how to do spreadsheets. We have a lot to do”.
With that, Cathy turns to introduce me to a young Irish volunteer working with the organisation, commends her on her brilliance, then darts off to another meeting, recommending a book to me as she leaves. I ordered it on Amazon today. Its title is Telling true stories and I’m hoping this is a good start.
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
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