Callaloo

Callaloo is a 208-episode radio serial drama currently broadcast across national radio stations across the Eastern Caribbean States; it is expected to be on-air in the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, St. Marteen, Trinidad, and Jamaica. According to the main implementer, PCI Media Impact, these new countries will take Callaloo's broadcast potential from 650,000 to 5.5 million community members with specific storylines and campaigns designed to reach adolescents, households, farmers, and leaders.

The entertainment-education (E-E) strategy can be gleaned from this description of the plot, from PCI Media Impact: "Callaloo is a steamy mix of love, desire, joy, corruption and tragedy. It will pull listeners left and right and up and down through its tangle of subplots as friendships form, families bond, enemies are made and relationships tested. Callaloo captures the everyday trials and nuances of life in the Caribbean. Dennis McLaren struggles as a distracted and philandering single father whose nightclub attracts a lot of shady business. One of his children takes advantage of the privilege her father's wealth brings and rebels by seeking the affection of dangerous men. Within the first few episodes, several teens are in serious trouble. Gregory Singh is forced to investigate a hit and run accident and clues point to his friend Dennis. Another family struggles with raising an autistic daughter. In the end, some characters remain tenacious, motivated and optimistic, while others wither in disillusion, vice and pessimism."

For example, one character is "one of the more affluent business persons in the country and will use any means necessary for his personal success, including draining of a major wetland for a hotel development. His family thinks it too incredulous to believe that with their love for the environment, that their sibling/son would do such a thing." Another character had her first child when she was 16. She is in a relationship with a man who is promiscuous and will soon find out he is HIV positive. Priscilla is very concerned about Gregory's behaviour in the recent past and trying to figure out what's going on. Then, there is Albert St. Martin, the supervisor in a cleaning company factory; he suspects that the operations of the factory may be violating environment laws plus other "shady business". He is in turmoil about saying anything as he feels he needs to protect his job. Yet his son Eddie is the editor of his secondary school newspaper; as a result of dead fish and other disturbing findings in the nearby rivers, he is beginning to advocate for protection of rivers.

HIV/AIDS, Environment, Youth