Radio Campaign against Child Stunting

Central to the NECDP campaign strategy was attention to different stages of behavioural change. According to MDF, communication activities need to progress in distinct stages, from an awareness-building and sensitisation phase to education and information, and, finally, to motivation for trial of new behaviours. MDF developed the following 3-stage strategy:

1. A magazine-format radio series was designed to create an awareness of the problems that had been identified, and to create a knowledge base to build on.
2. Key messages from the radio series encouraged new behaviours to address the identified problems; these messages were reinforced by a multi-media resource kit for use in workshop environments.
3. Discussion of the key issues was generated by a country-wide network of rural RLCs, each of which consisted of audience members, with the expectation that recognition and discussion of their problems would mobilise communities into taking action.

MFD also coordinated awareness-generating campaigns through local and national radio programmes. These programmes were broadcast in two of the major languages: Runyankole and Luganda.

Children, Health, Nutrition.

According to a report published by MFD, "Despite Uganda's plentiful food supplies, over twelve percent of its children die before their first birthday because of malnutrition that triggers disease. Surviving children are often chronically undernourished. As a result 40 percent of Uganda's 24.7 million population cope with child-growth stunting on a day-to-day basis. By contrast, this problem is only experienced by two percent of the global population. More than one third of Uganda's children under 35 months are too short for their age with insufficiently developed long bones. The children's physical underdevelopment means that they suffer from a corresponding deficiency in their mental development that leaves them intellectually and socially deprived....

"Although it’s too early to confirm the impact of the communications strategy developed by MFD, ...[f]igures from NECDP Management Information Systems showed that the project reduced malnutrition among children. For example, the malnutrition level for children under 72 months in project areas was reduced from 23.1 percent in July 2002 to 13.5 percent as of March 2003."