"This evaluation of Andrew Lees Trust’s Projet Radio (ALT/PR) in Southern Madagascar examines the impact of radio broadcasts on audience knowledge and attitudes relating to certain MDGs. It finds that the project is achieving some notable success in changing and enhancing knowledge and attitudes o ... n topics including HIV/AIDS, family planning, mother and child health, environmental issues, social and administrative issues and gender inequality. Radio is also having a positive impact on uptake of health services, enrolment in literacy classes, construction of environmentally-friendly woodstoves, tree-planting, agricultural yields, and awareness of strategies for poverty reduction through incomegeneration and community associations. This evaluation looks at ALT/PR’s methods and organisation and finds many advantages to its particular three-way process of working. This involves radio stations, communities and local service-providers in a mutually advantageous partnership for the production, distribution and broadcasting of radio programmes. The provision of radio-sets to listening groups appears to be a very successful strategy, and our surveys show a high level of commitment and enthusiasm on the part of listeners, especially women. The ability of radio to scale-up and extend the on-the-ground work of local service-providers emerges quite clearly. Our study also looks at challenges that ALT/PR has tackled and, in some cases, is still facing. These are challenges involving management and networking in what is a particularly poor and disadvantaged area. The project still faces issues relating to ensuring its radio programmes are consistently and truly participative. Demand for its services is high and there is a risk of staff becoming over-stretched, particularly for senior management. ALT/PR is demonstrably cost effective and has a good local reputation, but fundraising continues to be a time-consuming preoccupation. ALT/PR is already tackling the major long-term challenge of sustaining the networking mechanism it has set up, and we highlight some encouraging signs of sustainability." (Abstract) more

"The study revealed important coverage by Project ‘Radio SIDA’ of the targeted populations. 89% of the population that was studied declared having heard about AIDS on the radio. Radio is clearly the most important source of information for both urban and rural populations. Given that 68% of the ... population also knew that the broadcasts were produced by ALT, it can be concluded that a large part of their knowledge about HIV originated from Project ‘Radio SIDA’. Knowledge about AIDS was impressive, and 75% of the population could quote blood and sexual relations as ways of transmitting HIV/AIDS, and 77% could quote both fidelity and condoms as means of prevention. More fundamentally, the Focus Group Discussions revealed that the broadcasts seem to have had considerable impact on the population’s belief in the existence of HIV/AIDS, given the characteristics of the region this is really quite a success. Project ‘Radio SIDA’ can congratulate itself for having considerably increased AIDS knowledge in the urban and rural populations of the Anosy and Androy regions after undertaking only two sub-projects that each lasted 7 months and only cost $25,000." (Executive summary) more