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Why we tell stories to save lives — Georgia Arnold
Tell us about the MTV Staying Alive Foundation
The MTV Staying Alive Foundation has been on for over 20 years now. I co-founded it, and we started talking about issues around HIV to our MTV audience around the world. But what we realised, after a few years of operation, was that while it was great to be able to use the brand to create content, actually, we could do a lot more if we created a foundation, a charity. So, we are an independent charity, but we have the right to use the MTV brand. We are unique because we are the only charity in the world that can do this. What we do is tell stories to save lives. We do it through MTV Shuga. We want to reach young people wherever they are. It is really about reaching farthest miles anywhere around the world. We knew, when we started doing this, that young people were hugely affected by HIV globally and that’s why we wanted to be able to impact that. But as we have broadened our work, we have realised that you can never treat HIV in isolation, it is about being able to reach an adolescent boy or girl with information about their sexual reproductive health and rights. But you can’t target a young person and say you want to talk about sex or HIV and expect them to listen. You have to do it in a way that they feel comfortable with. So, we make sure that we are talking about their lives in everything that we do. We make sure that they feel that their voices are being heard and listened to, and we can reflect that back in what we produce.
There are several other health challenges that are peculiar to youths, why stick with HIV?
HIV hasn’t gone away. Despite the fact that it’s perception has changed and improved absolutely; in fact, when we started MTV Shuga 10 years ago, our message was very simple because there wasn’t much you could say. You could talk to people about using condoms, you could talk about the stigma and the myths around HIV and you could talk about getting tested. But then, 10 years ago, getting tested was traumatic, you were not entirely sure it was confidential, and the drugs you could take were not always accessible as they were expensive. But, if you look at where we are today with the information about HIV, first of all, there is a lot of different messages you can talk about. You can talk about self-testing, which is incredible. You can talk about PrEP, the drug that you can take if you are at risk of HIV; it’s a daily pill that you take to prevent getting HIV. More than that, if you want to focus on someone around HIV, you actually have to talk about sexual reproductive health in general. For a young girl or boy, you need to make sure that they understand what consent is. For a girl, that she understands that as a girl, a condom will protect you from HIV and from getting pregnant and other STIs. Also, that if a girl wants to look at contraception, there are other options out there. There are long-term contraceptives, the implants or the IUD. There’s also the pill. You also have the opportunity, if you want to get pregnant and also space out your next child. You don’t have to continually be pregnant. So there are a lot of different things, but also making sure that a young person knows that they should always double protect, but only a condom will protect you against both. So, there’s a lot to talk about.
Speaking on achievements, how would you categorise the achievements of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation. Have you found these measures to be effective, can they be quantified?
Yes, we can quantify achievements, because we have been effective. The World Bank did a study on MTV Shuga in Nigeria (Series three), and they did randomised control trials for 5000 young Nigerians and split them into two groups. One group watched MTV Shuga and the other watched a youth entertainment show that had no social message in it. At the same time, both groups got vouchers for youth-friendly HIV testing centers and were tested for Chlamydia on day one and then again, six months later. They were both asked 100 questions on first day and six months later. What they saw was that the MTV Shuga viewers doubled the number that got tested for HIV than the non-MTV Shuga viewers. Among the MTV Shuga viewers that were youn girls, Chlamydia dropped by 58 per cent in six months. Also, we saw that the MTV Shuga viewers were having less concurrent partners, which is probably why Chlamydia dropped as well. So, we have fantastic results. And I think we see it because not only do we produce this TV show, we have a huge audience here in Nigeria and across the world. We produce it rights free and cost-free, so we give it away. Not only does it air on MTV Base, but its also in Nigeria on NTA, AIT, and Silverbird. So, we have an enormous audience; 720 million homes around the world are able to watch MTV Shuga.
We have also taken it off TV so we have a parallel radio show; we have a graphic novel that we produce and we have digital presence on social media. What I am really passionate about is the peer education that we do. We create MTV Shuga clubs. At the moment, over the next two years, we are training up 150 young people in Lagos State, Kano, and Kaduna, and they will be trained on how to use MTV Shuga. These 150 young people will then go out into those three states and into communities to create MTV Shuga clubs. Across six weeks, they will bring young people in and screen an episode and then talk about what they feel and how they feel the story reflects personally on their own lives. From that, we will see real change. So, in two years, we should reach 25,000 young people directly.
Shuga is back, what would you say are the three most important health messages that we can expect?
The umbrella message is sexual reproductive health, but I think number one would be contraception in terms of a young woman knowing what her options are, where to go and where to get it from. I think number two is HIV; that is fundamental to the world. Number three is tackling gender-based violence, that is so important to us. This is series seven, but before the end of the year, we would have produced ten. In every single series that we have done, violence, unfortunately, is always part of our storyline. So, what we make sure that we do is to ensure that young people who watch MTV Shuga know where to go to get information. We work with the Federal Ministry of Health here in Lagos and at national level, we work with ‘Hello Lagos’. We are also working with the Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team (DSVRT), and for sexual health information, we are working with DKT’s Honey and Banana website, and Marie Stopes International.
Do you face any sort of backlash, especially from parents who believe their children should simply abstain?
Interestingly, till date, we have not had any backlash. I think it is partly because in every country, we always work with the government. We are not looking to smash down barriers, what we are looking to do is to be flexible with them, to try to push them a little bit. We have story lines that address not having sex at the moment. I personally don’t like to use the word abstain because I don’t think a 14, 15 or 16-year-old uses the word abstain. They talk about not having sex. I think it is very important that a young person chooses for them when it is the right time to have sex. Parents play a really important role in this. I am the mother of a 20-year-old, and it is really important to be able to have those conversations with your child. But they have to trust you and I think that as a parent, one of the things we encourage is cross-generational watching of MTV Shuga – that a parent watches it with their child, it opens up the door to having conversations around sex. We all know as parents that the more you tell a child not to do something, the more likely it is they are going to do it. If we can have an open conversation with them, if we are able to talk about ‘when you choose to do it, do you know how to do it safely’, then that is really powerful. It is not going to send them scurrying off to have sex, it is going to make sure that they are armed with all the knowledge they need to make sure that the first or the next one after that, they do it the right way.
In your opinion, does Nigeria have the right attitude toward tackling HIV?
I don’t think any country in the world is doing enough. The problem with HIV is that despite the innovation that has happened, HIV is still with us. In fact, there has just been some statistics that came out recently at an AIDS conference in Mexico. They are seeing an increase, in Eastern and Southern Africa, among young women of HIV. Today, there should be no increase in HIV, no one should contact HIV. In the simplest of forms, if we used condoms, if we were all tested, if we were all able to access PrEP, there should be no HIV infection. The reality is very different, and the reality is that the HIV epidemic is still an epidemic, particularly amongst young people, particularly amongst young girls. So no one is doing enough. Also, we rely too much on treatment, I think countries are very good at the treatment side of diseases. They are not so good at the prevention because to talk about prevention means you have to talk about sex. That is not the reality.
MTV Shuga has become quite popular among youths, do you think it is because of the name, or it is because of the message?
I think it is a mixture. The MTV brand is a really powerful tool at our disposal, we are really privileged to be able to use it and use it in such a positive way. I think the other thing with MTV Shuga is that what we try to do is reflect lives. So, before we start writing any script or storyline, the very first thing we do is that we sit and talk to young people in the country and the cities we are working in. For instance, in this series in Nigeria, we have characters who are not only from Lagos but Kano and Kaduna as well. We do focus groups with these young people, and we understand everything that they do outside of what their parents think that they do; what music do they listen to, what clothes do they wear, how do they talk to their parents, teachers, and friends, have they had sex, how many partners have they had, have they chosen not to have sex yet, and how do their peers respond to that. We take all of that and we turn them into story lines. So MTV Shuga is really about the truth of their lives, and I think that is one of the reasons young people are drawn to it. We tell the truth, and the truth isn’t always pretty. But I think when you see your story out there, it certainly reflects back on you and the actions that you take.
Did you think the show would come this far?
Truthful answer, absolutely not. When we started back in Kenya 10 years ago, we did three episodes and we discovered an unknown actress called Lupita Nyong’o. It was her first role. We knew we had been making a lot of documentaries and we had made a film, and we knew that there was power in what we were doing and power in telling stories. We didn’t realise how much we would connect with young people. We hoped. Not only are we launching here in Nigeria, but we have started filming in Abidjan, so we are doing our first Francophone MTV Shuga. Earlier this year, we premiered MTV Shuga Down South, the second series in South Africa. Later this year, we are premiering MTV Nishedh for India. It is the first series we have done outside of Africa. We have to make sure that we are always in the moment and that we always have the best acting talent, the most relevant musicians for the country and the region, but also quality. It is quality over quantity, and that has been our mantra this year. For the first time, we are producing four series, we normally do one a year. So we have to make sure we are really looking at the best story lines and making sure that we understand our audience all the time.
What’s the most challenging part of producing Shuga?
There are so many challenges. I was on set for a while, and the rain was one of them. We film inside and outside and we are in the rainy season and that is definitely a challenge. The script is definitely the bit that we really focus on, so I will see six versions of the script until we are all 100 per cent happy that we have got the voice right.
Describe MTV Shuga Naija season 4.
The best yet.
Why we tell stories to save lives — Georgia Arnold
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