Umurage Communication for Development’s radio drama season 3 to offer disease control, anti sex GBV messages

By The Inspirer Staff.

The local Edutainment ‘Umurage’ communication for development (UmC) will soon launch the radio serial drama season 3 with 54 episodes, covering a period of 26 weeks.

The season 3 will be inaugurated in partnership with the Ministry of Health through Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Global Fund, Swiss Cooperation, Society for Family Health (SFH-Rwanda), Breakthrough Action and other stakeholders to develop a series of the radio serial drama “Umurage, Season 3”.

The serial drama will be broadcast on various radios including Radio Rwanda, Isango Star, City Radio, Radio Salus and Radio Izuba in mid-November 2018.

Known for its previous radio serial dramas in Rwanda, Umurage Urukwiye (Rwanda’s Brighter Future) and Impano n’Impamba (A Gift for Today and that will last a long time), UmC is a local non-government organization (NGO) located in Kigali and is affiliated with population Media Center (PMC).

Speaking during a press conference on November 6, 2018, Emmanuel Nuwamanya, Marketing and Communications Officer at UmC said that the partnership with various development partners will help to boost welfare of Rwandans through mindset and behavior change.  

“Umurage” radio serial drama is an informative, educative, and entertaining programme that seeks to address current health and social issues. The drama models a methodology of entertainment-education created by Miguel Sabido that enables the serial drama to capture the attention and emotions of the audience on a continual basis, and to allow the audience to identify more closely over time with the fictional characters, their problems, and their social environment.

During “Umurage3”, the audience will be introduced to the new characters of Teta Diane and Rugwe, while continuing to follow the lives of Gasake, Kofi, Dancilla, Yabase and Davia.

Season 3 will deal with HIV Prevention and control, Antenatal/Post-Natal Care, Family Planning and couple communication, Sexual Gender Based Violence (SGBV), Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health, Child Protection and Malaria prevention.

The Umurage radio serial drama season 3 follows the recently concluded “Umurage 2”, a 156 episode that ran from June 2017 to September 2018.

The radio serial drama will be connected to other community outreach activities that include community dialogues and social media platforms such as facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to develop the dissemination of key content around the different topics.

Some gaps to be filled during the season 3 includes but not limited to delivering at a health facility according to the feedback of the community.

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