Environmental radio soap opera in finals of 2008 Global Development Awards

Environmental radio soap opera project logo

The Environmental Radio Soap Opera for Rural Vietnam is in the finals of the 2008 Global Development Awards. Le Van Thiet, deputy director of the Southern Regional Plant Protection Center in Tien Giang, a co-author of the paper “Entertainment-education and rice pest management: A radio soap opera in Vietnam” has been invited by the President of the Global Development Network to the 10th Annual Conference to be held in Kuwait City, 3-5 February 2009, under the auspices of the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development.  In Kuwait, Mr Thiet will represent the soap opera team in presenting the paper as a finalist in the category “Societies and Natural Resource Management”.

The Global Development Network (GDN), an international organization working in collaboration with eleven regional partners. Eight regional partners are based in developing countries and three in developed countries. GDN works with developing country researchers and policy research institutes to support the generation and sharing of world-class policy-relevant research on development, helping to strengthen capacity in the process. GDN’s Global Research Projects, Regional Research Competitions, annual Research Awards and the annual Global Development Conferences are among its key activities. Founded in 1997, GDN is now headquartered in New Delhi, with supporting offices in Cairo and Washington. Every year GDN organizes the Global Development Awards and Medals Competition where completed research papers are invited to participate.

Promotional poster of the environmental radio soap opera

The radio soap opera was a collaboration between Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), Voice of Ho Chi Minh City (VOH), Visayas State University (VSU), Philippines and IRRI to explore the use of entertainment education (E-E) concepts to communicate pest management and environmental protection to rice farmers.  First funded by Rockefeller Foundation and launched in July 2004, the first series focused on pest management. Each 20-minute episode was broadcast twice a week over several radio stations reaching more than 2 million farmers. After 104 episodes, the soap opera motivated farmers to reduce their insecticide sprays by 31% and their fertilizer and seed use by 7% and 9%, respectively. Farmers who had followed the soap opera series had significant changes in attitudes, reduction in insecticide use (by 60%), seed use (by 33%) and fertilizer use (by 9%). The follow-up series, an environmental radio soap opera, was awarded the 2005 World Bank Development Marketplace award and the prize money helped developed and broadcast 104 episodes on environmental issues.

The paper which describes in detail how each drama episode was developed by a team of technical experts and script writers showed that the E-E approach is an effective platform to rapidly reach millions of farmers with resource management information.  The soap opera project has also won other recognitions, like the 2007 COM+ award for communicating science to people and the planet by the Alliance of Communicators for Sustainable Development and in 2008 the One World Broadcasting Trust presented the soap opera with a commendation certificate for “an outstanding and unique contribution to the communication of sustainable development and human rights”.