Urunana - Special Award Winners 2008
In 2008 the Special Award for Development Media went to Urunana, a Rwandan health education soap opera that has been running for nine years and 950 episodes, with an estimated audience of 10 million. It is run by the Rwandan NGO Urunana Development Communication, together with the charity Health Unlimited.
Urunana was nominated by Felicity Finch, who plays Ruth Archer in the long-running British radio soap The Archers. Felicity has visited the Urunana team on a number of occasions, and was there to see the soap's launch in 1998. She's seen on the right, together with Sam Kyagambiddwa (Urunana Head Writer, far left), Narcisse Kalisa (Urunana DC Managing Director, holding trophy), Jon Snow, and Ally Mugenzi of the BBC World Service.
Urunana follows a group of characters who live in the fictional village of Nyarurembo. The programme is designed to deliver essential health messages, and to do so in a way that is well-informed and not patronising. To make sure of this, the production team visits rural communities and discusses the storylines with listening groups.
Urunana cast members recording in the studio
Urunana receives the Special Award
The programme’s approach has also had a proven impact on its audience. Surveys undertaken by Urunana DC, as well as independent evaluators, have shown that a majority of listeners go on to discuss safe sex, family planning, and other issues that are generally considered taboo in Rwanda. These outcomes now appear to be feeding through to improvements in people’s health.
The Urunana team now uses another method to reach and engage with its audience: live outreach events, which bring actors from the soap to rural areas where they meet the public and perform on stage. These events, which take place around twice a year, are enormously successful and consistently attract thousands of audience members.
Urunana’s success is especially significant because of the way in which radio was used in the genocide of 1994. Regular announcements were made over the radio waves to kill Tutsis, and the specific names and addresses of the people to target were sometimes given out. However, as Narcisse Kalisa, Managing Director of Urunana DC, pointed out in his speech at the One World Media Awards ceremony, radio is now being used to make a positive difference to people’s lives.