Intervention(s)
The TV series C’est la vie! is now in it’s third season of production and is specifically designed to address issues related to adolescents’ and women’s rights. The plot revolves around everyday life in a maternal health clinic in Senegal and characters are based on extensive formative research. Themes presented in the series focus on GBV (IPV, forced and early marriage, sexual abuse, female genital mutilation, illegal abortion), on sexual and reproductive health (family planning, use of contraceptives, HIV and sexually transmitted infections, right to information), on maternal and child health (prenatal and postnatal care, quality of health care, traditional medicine), and more generally on gender equality, couple communication, and female autonomy. C’est la Vie! is developed and produced by the Réseau African pour l’Education à la Santé (RAES), a Senegalese non-governmental organization with support from UN partners.
The intervention being evaluated is Season 1 of the TV series, C’est la vie!, screened through regular film clubs in each village. Season 1 of C’est la vie! is composed of 26 episodes (25 minutes for each episode). Each village screening will show three episodes in a row. Viewings will be every other week in each village over approximately five months. C’est la vie! season 1 has been translated to Wolof and Pular prior to the start of the intervention.
In addition to the TV series, study arm 2 will include “Pedagogical kits,” which have been developed by the RAES social behavior change communication (SBCC) team, in collaboration with United Nations Agencies. The objective of the pedagogical kits is to strengthen the impacts of the TV series by stimulating personal reflections and collective debates on sexual and reproductive health, maternal and child health, and GBV. The kits are composed of post-projection discussion guides that accompany each episode and workshop guides that are composed of seven themes.
Implementation will be carried out by MobiCiné, through mobile units that visit each village on a rotating basis. Mobile units are cars carrying projectors and screens. Each mobile unit staff includes a screening technician and a communication specialist for monitoring attendance and leading the SBCC component (Pedagogical kit including the post-screening discussions and workshops). Implementation of the film clubs was tested via a pilot study which was approved by the Senegalese ethics committee, Comité National d’Éthique pour la Recherche en Santé (CNERS), in March 2019, and carried out over a two week period in six villages over the month of April 2019. The pilot study was implemented with the objective of determining implementation feasibility, optimization and test intervention components prior to development of the present impact evaluation.