PAUL DE LAY: We’ll get started now. We expect the first lady of Zambia to join us. She’s the last speaker, so we have some time. But let’s get started. I know how constrained everybody’s time is. My name is Dr. Paul De Lay. I’m the senior advisor on AIDS for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Today is the fourth and final press briefing that we organized for this conference.

And today we want to discuss a newly developing success story in Zambia, a country that has been one of the hardest-hit in the AIDS pandemic, where over 20% of the adult population is HIV-infected. Let me tell you a little bit more about the context. One out of every six urban youth, aged 15 to 19, is HIV-infected. By the age of 13, 37% of boys and 27% of girls have had sex. Among 15 to 19-year-olds, 62% of boys and 59% of girls have had sex.

In this context, the government of Zambia launched a series of campaigns directed at youth, and one of these is the HEART project that we’re going to be hearing about today -- Helping Each other Act Responsibly Together. Let me put this in further context. In the past five years, HIV infections in the 15 to 19-year-old urban girls population have dropped nearly 50%, from 28% to 15%. This is a remarkable accomplishment, and it’s echoing Uganda’s success story, where, very similar, we see young age cohorts, particularly girls, being the first signal that the epidemic is turning around.

How did this happen? What changes in behavior led to this decline? Well, reducing infections through sexual transmission in youth involves three basic strategies, what we call the ABCs. “A” for abstinence, “B” for be faithful, and “C” for condoms. This is not a new concept. However, over the past five years, we’ve gained a better understanding of the delicate balance between these three strategies. In some communities, the delay of sexual debut is key to reversing the epidemic. In other communities –- for example, where young people marry early -– faithfulness is the critical strategy. Today’s discussion demonstrates how a program designed by youth, for youth, using mass media, can dramatically reduce premarital sex among single women from 41% in the early ‘90s to 14% in the late ‘90s. In addition to this delay of sexual debut, other participants in this program used condoms during their last sexual act nearly twice as often as those youth who were not participating in this program. These persons tended to be older and tended to be women.

We have three speakers today, and they will describe how this campaign achieved such dramatic results. The first is Dr. Jane Bertrand, who’s the Director at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs. To her left is Holo Hachonda, from the Youth Action Organization, youth communications coordinator -– Youth Activist Organization. And we’ll be joined by Maureen Mwanawasa, the first lady of Zambia.

JANE BERTRAND: Good morning. Can you hear me in the back? Thank you. The Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs has been involved in strategic communications for nearly 20 years. We made our name in the area of international family planning and population, but in recent years have moved increasingly into the area of HIV/AIDS. The program we’ll be presenting today represents what we mean by a “strategic communication approach” -- that is to say, a communication that is designed with formative research, implemented, tracked, and evaluated in terms of its impact on specific behaviors. The HEART campaign also represents a balanced campaign, in that it promotes both abstinence as well as consistent condom use among those that are sexually active. I think it’s particularly important to stress the idea of having this kind of balance in that, in a given youth population, such as the one in Zambia, we found that a segment of youths were very receptive to the abstinence messages. There was a genuine fear of HIV infection and, for many youth, abstinence is a very clear and effective way of avoiding infection. On the other hand, as Paul mentioned, there are the realities of sexuality among Zambian youth. By the age of 19, 84% have already had sexual relations. By the age of 15, over 25% have already had sexual relations such that it is equally important to promote consistent condom use for that population.

HEART stands for Helping Each other Act Responsibly Together. It is a program designed by youth, for youth, and my colleague Holo will be able to elaborate on what we mean by that. And it promotes, not only individual change, but possibly, more importantly, change in the social norms as they relate to healthy reproductive behaviors. I’d like to stress that this campaign was developed, not only with technical assistance from Johns Hopkins, but also with TAs from Population Services International -– we have representatives today from that organization –- and a number of youth-serving NGOs in Zambia.

To those of you in the media, I’d like to point out that we’re particularly glad to have this opportunity to present something that reflects the use of the media for promoting behavioral change, since, despite all of the talk about the importance of prevention at this conference, there have been relatively few sessions with a focus on the use of strategic communications for bringing about the kinds of behavioral change that everyone is interested in seeing. The HEART campaign represents one of those.

I mentioned previously that the heart of strategic communication is the evaluation. There is a lot going on out there in terms of uses of media. There is relatively little in terms of systematic documentation of what are the effects of communication campaigns on key behavioral outcomes. The report that we have available, if any of you in the audience are interested in reviewing it, describes not only the campaign but gives the data in terms of the effect and the impact of this campaign. As Holo will describe in more detail, it’s a multimedia approach, including a series of five TV spots in phase one -– and we have the pleasure of showing you one of those spots in a few minutes -– radio in rural areas, a music video, and print materials.

This campaign was quite successful in actually reaching the target audience, which were youths 13 to 19 years old. 71% of urban youth saw one or more of the TV spots, although the number was closer to one-third of rural youth. We were very impressed by the fact that over three-quarters of both males and female viewers said that this campaign had caused them to take one or more actions -- talking to another person, such as their partner, about safer sex; deciding to abstain from sex or return to abstinence; or actually use condoms. Overall, viewers were more knowledgeable than non-viewers about HIV.

We will not bore you with the entire methodology of the study, nor all of the results that are included in this. But I’d just like to highlight a couple of the key messages or key results that came out of this campaign. In terms of viewers versus non-viewers -– and this is after the statisticians controlled for age, sex, and other potentially confounding factors -– viewers were 1.9 times more likely than non-viewers to have ever used condoms; viewers were 1.6 times more likely to have used condoms at the time of last sex. In terms of abstinence, we also see the effects of this campaign on the actual or the remaining abstinent or returning to abstinence.

With this brief introduction to the results, I’d like to invite you to pick up a copy of the report if you’re interested. And I’d like to turn it over to Holo for more of a description of what actually happened on the ground and the involvement of the youth organizations.

HOLO HACHONDA: Thank you, Jane. The idea behind the HEART campaign was to emphasize youth leadership and youth participation in the implementation, starting from the process of designing, implementation management, and evaluation of the campaign itself. So, there were a number of steps that we did follow. The first step was slotting five partners, as well as mobilize organizations that would work with us. We formed a consortium of NGOs that included organizations from government, NGOs, as well as 11 youth organizations, represented by 11 young people.

After a few days of workshop, the young people involved came up with a selected segment audience, and they decided which audience would be targeted with what messages. The first audience that we selected at the meeting was young people who are not sexually active. And the objective was to maintain or delay sexual initiations of these youth. The second audience was young people who were already having sex, and the message there was to appeal to them to basically start practicing safer sex methods, which is basically the use of condoms. And after that, the young people themselves decided what channels would be most popular to transmit those messages that they had developed. And in the first part of the campaign, we looked at abstinence messages, mostly trying to popularize abstinence. At that time, when we started with the work of the campaign itself, most young people said they did not think abstinence was viewed as something “cool” or something “hip” to actually come out and say “I’m abstinent.” So what we needed to do was to try and give abstinence an image of “coolness.” So the messages that we developed would try and popularize the idea of delaying sexual debut or actually going back from sexual activity to abstinence.

As I was saying, our emphasis was “A” for abstinence, and condom use. We did not really emphasize on “B” in this case, because we did not think -– in a country where prevalence is at one in six, and where sexual activity is as high as 84% among 15 year olds, we thought it was not practical for a young person to be faithful to one sexual partner. There is what you would call (Unintelligible) monogamy, where a young person is faithful for one person for a month, and then faithful to another partner for the next month, by the end of the year has been faithful to 12 people. So it wasn’t a practical thing for us to kind-of promote.

So we focused on sending the messages on abstinence; if not, then they should resolve to consistent condom use. In the condom use we did not just talk about using a condom, but we insisted that condoms need to be consistently and correctly used, because most young people would use a condom at one time and not use it another and expect it to still work. So we needed to correct those myths that were about the condoms.

So in the first phase of the campaign we came up with a number of media products. Our first channel that we selected was the use of TV. For that, we produced five different spots with different messages. I’ve forgotten to mention the age group of our target audience. We’re targeting young people between 15 to 19 years old, which is what we decided was “youth” in Zambia, although it goes up to 35 sometimes, depending on the occasion. But this is the segmented audience that we actually worked with.

After that, we also produced two music videos that complemented the messages that were in the form of adverts. We also produced three posters that depicted the actual adverts that we were showing on TV. And then we had printed messages that explained the issue of abstinence, how condoms can be used, why young people needed to be abstaining, in exercise books and sold them in schools. So those are the different materials that actually complemented the adverts that were on TV.

In the second phase of the campaign -– and I’m not going to talk too much about the second phase -– we went on to produce radio spots. We made 27 different messages in seven main languages. I think different languages in Zambia are about 72, but we made seven for the main languages. The others are just dialects. And just to show you what kind of product we’re talking about here, I’ll ask my colleague to put one of our -– the first one you’re going to see is a message about promoting abstinence among girls -– virginity. It’s (Unintelligible).

[break]

FEMALE SPEAKERS: [singing]...education is my first priority. Priority. One time for your mind. [rapping] I’m young and beautiful, there’s so much to live for. I don’t want to waste my future because I’ve got the power to abstain from the sex and forget about the rest of peer pressure, trying to make me lose my best. I hear you older men talking about we’ve got sex, and who knows where you’ve been? I say no to having sex, yes to abstinence, education is the key, gonna keep my virginity. [singing] In regards to achieving dreams that turn into reality, education is my first priority. In regards to achieving dreams that turn into reality, education is my first priority. In regards to achieving dreams that turn into reality, education is my first priority. [rapping] Next time you see me, I’ll have a (Unintelligible) and I’ll be like, taking care of (Unintelligible). With plenty books to read, I know that apathy (Unintelligible) so why should I end life and live in misery? It ain’t a compromise, it’s not a play, it’s my life that I protect so I plan to keep my dream awake. So all your girls out there, throw your hands in the air, (Unintelligible) abstaining. Yeah. Do you hear this? Yeah. I got the power to abstain. Yeah. Do you hear this?

HOLO HACHONDA: So the message there was basically the (Unintelligible) of priorities. We’re trying to promote the idea that there are priorities in life among young people than sex. And, as we heard, the young girls were talking about what the priorities would be -- completing education, becoming a doctor, getting a degree, and stuff like that. But you can see that the video talks of trying to be cool, to give an image that a young person who is abstinent can also be looking hip and cool and in fashion. So that was one of the music videos that we produced. We also did an abstinence video for boys, but, unfortunately, because of time constraints we won’t show you that. I also thought maybe also, for sake of balance, we should show you one of the messages we produced on consistent condom use. This was targeted at young men, age 15 to 19 years old.

MALE SPEAKER 1: (Unintelligible) This chick is the one. I mean, we spend so much time together, we do things together. It’s been three months now, and I trust her. I think it’s time we take off the condom.

MALE SPEAKER 2: Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time, Terence?

MALE SPEAKER 1: When (Unintelligible) did me bad? But I started using condoms with Christine, and, hey, Christine is a good girl. I know her very well. I know I’m the only guy in her life.

MALE SPEAKER 2: Come again? You (Unintelligible).

MALE SPEAKER 1: What are you saying?

MALE SPEAKER 2: Last time it was (Unintelligible). This time it could be HIV. Use the condom every time you have sex. (Unintelligible)

MALE SPEAKER 1: Every time, huh? Every time.

MALE SPEAKER 3: Don’t take chances. If you can’t abstain, use a condom every time.

HOLO HACHONDA: We kind of developed a storyline. The first phase, we have this young man, “Ice.” He’s called Ice because he’s supposed to be as cool as ice. He’s a womanizer, basically, and he contracted an STD in the first phase. So in the second phase he’s now seeing one person, and they’ve been seeing each other for a long time. And now he’s thinking, “because I trust this girl and I think this girl is the girl for me, I want to take off the condom.” So the friend is basically reminding him of his previous experience.

This is what we’ve produced. We’ve gone on to produce two other phases. In the second phase we produced four more of those messages, a continuation from the previous phase. And then we produced another music video, which talked about how you can’t tell by looking if a person is HIV positive or not. And all these are produced in partnership with popular artists in Zambia.

Unfortunately, the first phase had a hiccup, because in this first phase our then-Minister of Health wanted us to also show a message of young girls talking about using, introducing, or negotiating condom use in their relationships, kind of imparting young girls to be able to actually talk about condom use. But, I guess, after airing it for two weeks, that message was not well-received.

So basically, this gives you an idea of how our campaign is being implemented in Zambia. We are now into the third phase of the campaign. Right now we are going into a consultative process of going through the necessary authorities, such as the National AIDS Council -– getting approval from the National AIDS Council, getting approval from the Central Board of Health, and all the stakeholders that basically need to be consulted before we can go on the air. Thank you.

PAUL DE LAY: And now our final speaker. As promised, the first lady of Zambia, Madame Maureen Mwanawasa.

MAUREEN MWANAWASA: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We give thanks to the youth from Zambia that joined us for delivering such positive message to this conference. I believe that for him to be here it just shows the commitment the Zambians have against the scourge of AIDS -– preventive measures being taken, and also, the donors’ commitment to ensuring that everyone is touched. That is the youth, the old, and the ones to be born. The HEART project provides a dynamic success story that can be able to inspire working in the area of youth and HIV and AIDS, both within and outside the African continent. And we encourage them to acknowledge the fact that sustained campaigns aimed at the young people can indeed turn the tide of this scourge. It is also interesting to note that the video you have just watched is a video produced by the youths themselves, and that, when they come up with their own programs, they’re easy to adopt than for adults to impose programs on the youth. As adults, the best we can do is to give them support and ensure that the environment within which they have to operate is available.

The health communications support that the youth themselves have been in the forefront of creating, young people between the age of 13 and 19, as already mentioned. The clear, concise messages that use television as a medium of effective communication continue to encourage youth to become more responsible about their reproductive health and make informed decisions about whether to abstain from sex or use condoms to protect themselves from HIV and AIDS. It is pleasing that the majority of young people are in fact viewing abstinence as a more practical option.

At this juncture, I would like to mention that, since I came to this conference, I have been advocating for access of the woman’s condoms to the Zambian community, so that the girl child is empowered and is able to protect herself within her rights. And when that is achieved -– I would like to mention that sex using a condom will no longer be a negotiable issue, but a must and a right for the girl child.

I’m hopeful that the HEART program can be showcased as an example of best practices that can be replicated, shared -– both in other parts of Africa and other regions in the world. I put more emphasis on the girl child because of the vulnerable environment within which the girl child finds herself, and also it gives hope. The programs which are being run by MCTC -– that is prevention of infection from mother to child -– it gives hope to the youth that one day, even if they are born positive or if they acquire HIV and AIDS, they will be able to lead a reproductive life. At least that assurance has been there, and we are hopeful that we will be able to recreate life for the future.

And once again, I would like to thank Mr. Hachonda from Zambia for showing a good example as a youth. And being very positive about what is happening requires a lot of courage, a lot of commitment, and -– as the theme which we have here, knowledge and commitment for action -– he has actually shown that the youth in Zambia are ready to take action by the demonstrations of the speech and the video which we have just seen. Thank you very much.

PAUL DE LAY: Are there any questions?

MALE SPEAKER 4: (Unintelligible) Did you mention 72 different languages in Zambia, or am I mistaken?

HOLO HACHONDA: They’re more like dialects. We have seven main languages, and my fellow Zambians can help me if I’m mistaken, but I think it’s 72 dialects –- 7 main languages.

JOHN DONNELLY: Hi, I’m John Donnelly with “The Boston Globe.” Paul, two quick questions, and one for Holo. You gave some figures on the percentage of young women and young men who had sex in Zambia. Do you have the corresponding figures for the United States?

PAUL DE LAY: No. The short answer is no.

JOHN DONNELLY: And, following up on the first lady’s suggestion, do you intend to replicate this program in other countries in Africa?

PAUL DE LAY: The short answer is yes.

[laughter]

JOHN DONNELLY: Has anything started yet?

JANE BERTRAND: I might say that there is a -– if not similar program, another large-scale national-level mass media program, combined with other supportive communications, in Ghana –- the Stop AIDS, Love Life, that extensively used the mass media for behavioral change. That represents the second large-scale effort under way. It focuses on youth as well, although not as exclusively as the Zambian example.

PAUL DE LAY: John, just to finish up. Essentially all of our programs in Africa, as well as in Asia, do focus on youth and use different methodologies.

JOHN DONNELLY: And, Holo, I’m sorry, one more, a quick thing. You talked about the ads that involved negotiation for young women about condom use, and after two weeks it was stopped. Can you tell us about that, about what happened?

HOLO HACHONDA: I guess we also didn’t do our homework by not preparing the audience for that -– what can I say? -– strong message. Because young women are not necessarily seen as people as people who are -– I think society, our society, has not yet prepared itself for young women talking openly about sex. And the message was, if my boyfriend says he wants to have sex with me, I say “no condom, no sex.” I have a poster here that shows how young these girls were. Just to give you an idea of – these are the three girls. They’re having a dialogue about -– I’m talking about the TV ads -– they’re having a dialogue about this relationship with a young man, Ice, and how he wants to keep off the condom because they’ve been seeing each other for a long time. But this friend (MS?) says “Well, you tell your boyfriend no condom, no sex.” What happened is that, at the time, one of the political leaders mentioned unofficially that he did not believe in condoms. The media took that speech and blew it up. And after two weeks of seeing the media debate about whether or not it was right for us to be advertising messages on condom use among young people.

The campaign itself did suffer, in the sense that even messages on abstinence were banned. It has taken us 20 months, roughly, to get back on the air. But, I guess, with time, we hopefully will get more acceptance of these messages because it is a reality. And we’ve been doing what you call a “youth in crisis” method, public relations strategy, where we have used influential leaders, such as the current Vice President, then was Minister of Health, was actually -- we taped a message where he uses voiceover to talk about the problems young people are facing and why they need support from society. So, we’re getting a lot of leaders involved, just get (Unintelligible) the campaign and more (Unintelligible) phase, and (Unintelligible) of that phase.

[break]

MAUREEN MWANAWASA: -- I’m saying. At least airing of the TV ads. This particular on is also, in the second stage we did have an ad that was talking about condom use by boys, and it didn’t create any problems. Everybody seemed to have accepted this. But because it was now girls we were talking about using condoms, I think it’s that denial, it’s not accepting the fact that, where girls do get to a point where they can negotiate safer sex. And, also, just the realization that they in fact do have sex. I think it’s that type of thing where most parents or adults want to believe that their Jane or Mary is innocent and not engaging in sex. The other point is, I’m sorry to say that, something that has been going on in my mind -– I just question -– we think that older men who are, in fact, having sex with the younger women would not like to see an empowered younger woman.

PAUL DE LAY: The lady in the back.

FEMALE SPEAKER 1: I think the question is for the gentleman. Earlier on you mentioned that you had a campaign that was specifically targeting young children who were not having sex as yet. I just needed to know, at what stage did you talk to them about just their biological sexuality, before you started talking about AIDS and sex? So, I mean, there obviously is a point at primary school-going age that sex in school, or sex education in school. I just needed to get that part. Thank you.

HOLO HACHONDA: There are a couple of campaigns in Zambia that actually utilize other forms of communications. But, with this campaign, it’s specifically, exclusively using mass media. And it’s not possible for us to start explaining issues on sex. And I think that would even be more explicit than the ads themselves. But there are a lot of activities that are utilized, such as Trendsetters, that produce a newspaper that focuses basically on sex education and is targeted at schools. There are other programs that use interpersonal forms of communications, such as the Youth Activist Organization. So, basically, Zambia has this wheel of change, being led by young people and developing programs that are specifically targeted at young people. I think it’s probably one of the few countries that has an environment that is supportive of such programs.

FEMALE SPEAKER 2: I’m confused. I’m confused -- so straighten this out for me, if you would, Holo. You’ve just said Zambia is one of the few countries that it supports. In response to the gentleman’s question over here, you mentioned the controversy about the ads with the young women discussing negotiation of condom use. Did you not say that, because of that controversy the ads were pulled for 20 months? So, can you give us kind-of a timeline here? I mean, you were on the air for how long, you got pulled off –- I mean, your (Unintelligible) was completely pulled off the air for how long, back on the air for how long? Could you clarify that, please?

HOLO HACHONDA: Yes. First point. When I say Zambia is one of the few environments that is supportive of youth programs, I mean it’s supportive in the sense that young people can actually take on responsibility in implementing productive health activities. And that is a positive thing. Secondly, we were on air for two years with the first phase. We had no problems with that. We were able to evaluate the first phase, and this is the report that we are presenting. The second phase was launched, I think, about December 2000, and we were on air for exactly two weeks, before someone mentioned something and suddenly, everything fell apart. From that time to last week, we have been negotiating with certain people in government, as well as in religious-based organizations that have strong feelings about that kind of campaign, to basically make the campaign acceptable to both -– for their concerns as well as enable us to meet our objectives for the campaign. So, we are back on the air now, and, hopefully, we will continue being on air. And we’re trying to prevent that by now involving other stakeholders, other than young people, in that development phase of the program itself. So, if at all we do come up with something that is controversial, we will be able to say you are actually a part of this, so there is no way you can ask for it to be taken off like happened the last time.

MALE SPEAKER 5: In the, especially the first tape, the kids from very middle-class, and MTV-type of kids. I’m just stupid, I thought maybe they wouldn’t be the biggest group in your target group in your country. But, that’s the question, actually?

HOLO HACHONDA: Are you asking me -- ?

MALE SPEAKER 5: Is that also your target group? If you’re talking about epidemiology, is that the group that you should target on, or is that the group that you think you can reach with this type of media, this type of media messages?

HOLO HACHONDA: In our selected audiences we have differences as well. As you know, young people are not as hostile. So we develop messages that are specific to each audience. That kind of video is targeted at young people in urban areas who have access to television and who are kind of familiar with that kind of lifestyle, which is talk kind of music, going to clubs, and stuff like that.

For rural audiences, we have developed programs that are -- radio ads, that are specific to what would be regarded as who, in their own sense, and what is culturally acceptable and that would be related to them. So, we are kind of targeting specific messages, developed in specific ways, to make sure that these are not only relevant to the audience, but they are culturally appropriate.

JANE BERTRAND: I’d just like to add to that, that it’s a common communication practice in the United States, Europe, and worldwide to show an environment and show individuals that are slightly better off than the target population -– people they aspire to be, not necessarily the conditions they are living in.

FEMALE SPEAKER 3: Hi, I’m from (Misspelled?) in the U.K. I’d like to ask the first lady about her comment about female condoms. Assuming that they were more readily available, do you think it’s a practical reality that young Zambian women would want to use them, feel able to negotiate use of them? Could you comment a bit further?

MAUREEN MWANAWASA: Well, I believe that there’s a beginning to everything. We are talking of empowerment of the women to be able to compliment their position in society. And one of them is to empower them through the use of condoms. The same way the campaign was done for the men’s condom should be done for the women’s condom. And it’s a question of attitude. We hope that the local organizations in Zambia will be able to take it up, because this is a program which is supported by UNAIDS. And at the end of the day, it has no cost effect on the Zambian budget. It is one of the things which the UNAIDS is trying to transcend in order to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS. So, we will have to go out and do advocacy work, which should include assuring that the girl child or the Zambian woman has no fear, encourage them to improve on their self-image, and also assist them to have self-confidence and self-esteem, and be able to stand as women in society, fighting their own cause, and being positive to life. So, through that campaign and advocacy, I’m very positive that the women’s condom will have a positive impact and can succeed.

KATHY REILLY: Thank you, I’m Katherine Reilly. First I’d like to congratulate the first lady for the important work that she is doing with her fellow first ladies in Africa in acknowledging the importance of the empowerment of girls and women in the battle against AIDS. My question is, in light of the differences between African heads of state in government, in their political complexion and in their support of girls empowerment, and poverty alleviation of girls and women as a mechanism for fighting AIDS, what is the role that you, as the first lady, can do in influencing other first ladies to influence their husbands to be more progressive toward girls and women in the battle against AIDS?

MAUREEN MWANAWASA: Well, first and foremost, I would like to mention that, in the next three days, we are moving to Geneva, where we have the African First Ladies Alliance Conference on AIDS, and we hope that we can formulate policies which will assist our individual governments or heads of state to implement issues pertaining to HIV and AIDS, health care, prevention, and so on, and something for funding. I believe that the first ladies (Misspelled?) are special to the heads of state, so we may not come out on camera urging the heads of state to listen to us, but we should do our job at home, when they are relaxing, and assure that they hear the cries of people. And we are very sure that we should be able to achieve this.

KATHY REILLY: Thanks very much. Good luck.

PAUL DE LAY: Any other questions? This will be the last one.

FEMALE SPEAKER 4: I think this question is for Holo. I had two questions, really. You mentioned you had brought together a group from the beginning, when you were planning this. I’m sorry, I’m Laura (Misspelled?), representing “Christianity Today.” Did you bring in the church, the local church group from the beginning, because I hear you had some reaction afterwards? And also, in general, how did parents react to this campaign?

HOLO HACHONDA: In the development phase of the campaign, we really tried to balance the composition of what we called the “youth advisory group.” And we had about eight youth -- eight young people that came from religious-based organizations, one of which that was highly represented was the Catholic group called “Youth Allies,” and they were mainly responsible for the development of abstinence messages. But they participated also in endorsing the messages that were condom messages. But I think, what I must say that maybe we did not have enough representation of faith-based or what you call mother body organizations. We did have one sitting on our design team, but I guess now we’ve learned that we need to involve more of those as well in the process of developing the campaign messages.

How parents react to this? Well, I think there were different kinds of reactions. There are some parents that have strong opinions about that kind of messages on TV, but there are also positive messages that came from parents. Although they were a bit uncomfortable to be sitting during prime time, watching news, hearing about condoms and (Misspelled?) -- some parents have realized that it’s imperative for them to accept that young people are indeed having sex. But the wheel of change is a bit slow, so we are also doing what we call the Youth in Crisis Strategy, which tries to educate the parents themselves why we are being aggressive with this campaign.

MAUREEN MWANAWASA: Maybe, in addition to what Mr. Hachonda has said, the reaction of parents is just natural. The need for NGOs to explain how the condoms are going to be used. The parents obviously are worried that maybe the emphasis is to encourage children to use condoms, and they are worried that this will erode morals. But that is not the role of condoms. We are saying the reality, on the ground, whether you like it or not, sex is second place. So how to you protect your child?

At the same time, as parents, they have the duty at a family level, to ensure that the morals of children are put across to the children as they grow up. But they reach a stage where they make their own decisions, while they’re in the homes of their parents. And they should be armed with information before they are confronted with a disease. So this information is important for the children, so that they can have choices. We are not saying morals should be forgotten. No, the parents have a very, very big role to ensure that the children delay in engaging in sex, but reality is that one day or the other they have to do it.

PAUL DE LAY: Thank you. One more question, and then we need to end and clear the room.

FEMALE SPEAKER 5: Thank you, and just a contribution to what the first lady has just said. I listened during the panel discussion, the first lady of Zambia did allude to the fact that one of the biggest strategies that we should employ is the issue of promoting girl-child education. Because if we do that so much, the child will not want to get out of school for using sex. So I think that’s one of the biggest weapons, the goal of this campaign should be (MS?) let the Minister of Education also be involved. Such people can be encouraged (MS?) to stay in school. Some five years ago, the government introduced the idea that when a girl is expecting a child she can go and have her baby and come back. But now the (MS?) is showing us that those girls, they came back, but only for a season. Two years later they went back. So there was that element of just having that stigma (MS?) as a girl-child (MS). So I think (MS) -– the issue of girl-child education should really be one of the first priorities in our country.

PAUL DE LAY: Thanks, everyone.