Soul City 4

Focusing on domestic violence and rape, Soul City 4 aimed to impact people’s quality of life by integrating health and development issues into prime time television and other communication media. Specifically, in addition to 13 one-hour television episodes, 3 full-colour resource books were created on shifting attitudes and beliefs and 45 fifteen-minute episodes of a daily drama were produced. The stories and messages shared through these media are meant to inform while being entertaining; that is, they draw on edutainment as a strategy.

Collaboration and participation were key strategies to develop and support the multi-faceted campaign. Soul City 4's TV and radio episodes, and printed materials, extended the core Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication vehicle to include a partnership with the National Network on Violence Against Women (NNVAW). In fact, the NNVAW launched a campaign to ensure the speedy and effective implementation of the new Domestic Violence Act to coincide with the broadcast of Soul City 4. Specifically:

• training was conducted for social services providers, health care workers and police, as well as of NNVAW members (who were trained in advocacy skills). As part of these efforts, a domestic violence training video was produced.
• an advocacy campaign was developed to urge the national and provincial governments to implement the Domestic Violence Act. National. To that end, provincial advocacy-related activities took place throughout the broadcast period. Soul City assisted in the development of the advocacy course and the advocacy training, and played a key role in the implementation of the campaign.
• community mobilisation around violence against women was catalysed throughout the broadcast period. Organisers felt that a 24-hour, toll-free Stop Abuse Helpline helpline was a key mechanism through which concrete action could be facilitated. Established together with the Department of Justice and Lifeline to connect Soul City audiences in need of help, the helpline offered online counselling and a comprehensive national database to enable counsellors to refer callers to ongoing support at community level. The line received 20,000 calls in its first month.

Gender, Women, Health, Rights.

"Soul City Four generated extensive media coverage, which has helped to advance the advocacy objectives of the partnership. Soul City’s partner newspapers dedicated journalists to cover the series and its topics while the series was being shown, though the media-advocacy work that was undertaken with the NNVAW has expanded Soul City’s impact beyond the existing newspaper partnerships. This was done through the production of a Media Directory to help NNVAW advocates to access media coverage."

Click here to access a series of evaluation documents related to Soul City Four. Click here for "Achieving Social Change on Gender-based Violence: A Report on the Impact Evaluation of Soul City's Fourth Series", by Usdin S, Scheepers E, Goldstein SJ, Japhet GJ. Social Science and Medicine, 61(11): 2434-45, Dec. 2005.