Evaluating Health-promoting Radio Programs: A Toolbox for HAFY Radio Stations in Kyrgyzstan

From the Press Release
Community radio stations can monitor and evaluate their health and social development programming despite being small, with limited funds. That's the message of an evaluation and monitoring Toolbox created especially for a UNICEF-supported youth radio project in Kyrgyzstan.

The 'Healthy Airwaves for Youth' project (HAFY) [click here for a Programme Description] is a health communication strategy to minimise risk behaviours amongst Kyrgyz youth aged 10-19 years. HAFY, which was initiated in 2002, aims to increase the level of knowledge and awareness of the dangers of HIV/AIDS/STI, drug use and reproductive health among young people in five rural and remote regions of Kyrgyzstan: Batken, Osh, Naryn, Karabalta and Karakol. The radio stations working within the HAFY network are directly involving young people as message-makers through community-based participatory health-promoting radio programming.

The need of a toolbox for monitoring and evaluating the impact of HAFY radio programmes was identified during a 7-day intensive training workshop conducted by Health Communication Resources (HCR) from Australia on 'Radio Programming for Health Promotion'. HAFY partners were involved in further workshops facilitated by HCR in Kyrgyzstan in 2003 where the scope of the Toolbox was framed and HAFY-specific resources were developed.

The result is a 106-page Toolbox created by HCR with guidelines, examples and templates that match the reality and cost-effective needs of HAFY's radio stations. HAFY partners do not have a great deal of experience in evaluation, have limited funds and rely on volunteers and the pooled resources of local community organisations.

Marianne Ohlers, Programme Officer of UNICEF in Kyrgyzstan said, "The Toolbox is not meant to comprehensively evaluate all activities undertaken by HAFY but it does give guidelines on planning and evaluation, writing objectives, setting indicators for evaluation, sampling procedures, designing evaluation tools, and gathering data, analysing it and reporting it."

Ms. Ohlers said, "While the Toolbox is designed for the specific use of the radio stations involved in the HAFY project in Kyrgyzstan I trust that it can guide and inspire other community-based radio stations working to reduce risk behaviours among young people and other vulnerable groups."

The toolbox is available in English and Russian. Click on the links below to download the toolbox in PDF format [approximately 3 MB].
English | Russian