MTV Shuga- Storytelling to improve sexual and reproductive health

Photo credit: © Staying Alive Foundation Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Georgia Arnold, Executive Director of MTV Staying Alive Foundation will be presenting the ‘edutainment’ model as a vehicle to impact behaviour change and raise HIV awareness, using the 5th series of MTV Shuga as an example.

For over 20 years, Georgia has developed ground-breaking pro-social initiatives and campaigns for Viacom. She is also co-Founder and Executive Director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation, which uses mass media to raise awareness of HIV and invests in youth-led HIV-prevention projects around the world. As Executive Director, she oversees the award-winning mass-media behaviour change campaign, MTV Shuga, now in its fifth season, which has reached over 550 million people worldwide and discovered the Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o.

Georgia will introduce MTV Shuga, a 360 mass media campaign that uses the power of entertainment to generate positive sexual and reproductive health outcomes amongst young people. At the core of MTV Shuga is an award-winning TV drama, which follows the lives of a group of young friends as they encounter sexual, social, and educational challenges throughout their adolescent years.

The campaign has also incorporated: radio series, digital & social media platforms, graphic novels and peer education training, in order to effect positive change in millennial’s lives. Following on from two seasons in Nairobi and another two set in Lagos, the fifth season has been produced in South Africa for the very first time.

The event will feature a screening of MTV Shuga: Down South. Set in the homes, cafés, schools, parks and hangouts of the fictional township, Zenzele, and real-life Braamfontein, MTV Shuga: Down South is the fifth instalment in the award-winning drama series, MTV Shuga. The 12-part drama series follows the lives of a group of young friends as they encounter sexual, social, and educational challenges throughout their adolescent years.