USAID TULONGE AFYA PROJECT (2020 – To Date)

The USAID Tulonge Afya project, which means “let’s talk about health” in Kiswahili, promotes positive health practices in households and communities in Tanzania and targets women and youth (ages 15 to 24). To emphasize on one of our focus areas which in this case is ‘’Health Lifestyle” we have partnered with Fhi360 Tanzania, in implementing this project to specifically ensuring that youth are making better health choices and be able to live the lives of their dreams. Under this project, there were three platforms, namely Sitetereki, Naweza and Furaha Yangu.

SITETEREKI

youth face different challenges which hinder them to live to their full potential. Health-related challenges are among the major ones that have killed dreams of many youths. Through USAID Tulonge Afya project, we partnered with Fhi360 and T-Marc Tanzania to empower youth to adopt more positive health behaviors.

SITETEREKI platform under USAID Tulonge Afya, was created specifically to empower young people through;

• Offering them the right info to help them make the right health decisions.
• Giving them the ‘tools’ to make the right choices for themselves.
• Being their trusted, authentic, supportive, friendly, go-to resource.
• Safeguarding their hopes, dreams, aspirations, sense of self.

To support this platform, Smart Generation applied different innovative initiatives to bring the platform closer to youths. First by engaging influencers which youth could relate to, the likes of Nandy, Hamisa Mobetto, Dogo Janja and many others, this inspired youth to engage and started to take on the conversations which was once seen as a taboo in our societies. Several activities involved a casual talk between an influencer and a teenager.

Their talk was based on the lifestyle and important questions about reproductive health were asked. The basis of this content was that teens are always not comfortable to share their sexual experiences with elders as doing so is equivalent to go against taboo with resultant loss of respect. However, in the event they get their information from peers, the information is always misleading. Hence by introducing the talk with influencers it bridges that gap since these influencers are youth’s role models and the social distance between them is rather short to culminate into close friendship.

In this way it creates comfortable ambiance for youth to easily open their minds which in turn becomes added advantage for influencers to chip in important messages. Having passed through teenage era, influencers at this stage were used to transmit crucial or important messages to teens with minimum ease through the right path.

Smart Generation also facilitated youth to take ownership of this platform by introducing different challenges, major ones being Sitetereki Rap Challenge and Memes Challenge which made youth share health related messages in a fun and creative way through their digital platforms. Rap challenge attracted participation from more than 200 youths, with more than 300 rap videos clips created and shared by youths while memes challenges had a participation of more than 150 youth, sharing health related messages in their platforms by using memes.

All these digital had a record of over 150 million impressions and 25 million reach through digital channels.

NAWEZA (2020 – To date)

In partnership with T-Marc Tanzania and Fhi360 under the same USAUD Tulonge Afya project, Naweza platform had aimed to promote positive health practices in households and communities by transforming socio-cultural norms and supporting the adoption of healthier behavior.

By specifically targeting young adults Smart Generation employed innovative approach which explored communication as a key instrument in ensuring that healthier behaviors are adopted among families.

One of the initiatives was introduction of Couple Challenge, which brought together young couples and encourage them to communicate openly about matters which affects their relationship, this included pregnancy, parenting and healthier lifestyle.

Smart Generation also supported Mother meet up events which were under the USAID Tulonge Afya Project, by engaging influencers who fired up the ambiance in the events, by sharing their personal stories, which encouraged the women in attendance to also share their stories and commit to adopt more positive behaviors. All this campaign had a total of over 85 Million digital impression and 16 million reach to date.

FURAHA YANGU

Furaha Yangu (FY), “My happiness,” is a national campaign focused on HIV/AIDS testing, care, and treatment campaign which aim to contribute to Government’s efforts to achieve 95-95-95 goals by increasing targeted awareness and demand creation of the Test and Treat All services.

The communication objective of this campaign is to reduce stigma and discrimination, increase awareness that ART is available immediately after testing positive; increase perceived benefits of testing and the importance of beginning ART immediately;

Improve risk perception for those at risk; increase the belief in the importance of providing quality and confidential services (health providers).

Smart Generation supported this campaign by engaging influencers and creating contents that normalizes the use of ARV to the people who are HIV positive through making contents that reminds them to embrace ARV. This had a huge impact as more people were encouraged to ask questions and open via the official social media pages of the Furaha Yangu campaign.