Teaching Kids Life Saving Habits with Malaria No More

Organisation: Malaria No More
Service: User Research, Content Co-Creation, and Distribution

The Challenge:

Malaria is one of the deadliest diseases in Africa, killing a child every two minutes. Each year malaria claims the lives of 453,000 people—90% of them in Africa. Malaria also accounts for half of preventable absenteeism in African schools, causing up to 10 million missed days of learning each year.

Malaria No More is a non-profit organisation dedicated to helping eradicate one of the world’s deadliest diseases, malaria, from Africa. One of the key interventions to stop the transmission of the disease is for children and caregivers to use bed nets every night and adopt the best practice of seeing a doctor as soon as they feel symptoms. However, convincing caregivers about the importance of bed net usage and encouraging children to also take ownership of their health and use bed nets is a continuing challenge in many demographics across sub-Saharan Africa, including Kenya and Tanzania.

The Partnership:

Ubongo and Malaria No More teamed up to produce a special Ubongo Kids episode for World Malaria Day in 2015. The aim of this episode was to educate children on what malaria is, promote bed net usage and encourage children to ask their parents to have them tested at health facilities before they get treatment for malaria. Through our iterative story development process, we worked with Malaria No More to develop and test 3 potential storylines to communicate these messages, and found that by far the most engaging for kids was the story of detective Kiduchu and the mosquito army. We made the core learning objectives part of a mystery that the Ubongo Kids were trying to solve, ensuring that the message was not just heard, but also understood.

We also co-produced a 30-second public service announcement that played each day leading up to the Ubongo Kids broadcast and a fun, original song sung by the Ubongo Kids characters with the purpose of reinforcing the messages of the episode: “The mosquitos are coming, so get your bednets out!” and “If you’re feeling ill, don’t just take a pill. Pay the doctor a visit, so that she can cure it!”

The episode premiered in Kenya and Tanzania to over a million viewers and quickly became one of our most popular episodes from season 2 of Ubongo Kids. The episode has also been used by other organisations like a local health outreach project run by help2kids Tanzania. Children at a local orphanage received a presentation from help2kids staff then had the opportunity to watch and discuss the Ubongo Kids episode, and has be broadcast in rural areas of Tanzania by Rotary International Clubs and local video banda. This makes the episode a powerful educational tool to be used by organizations doing malaria health outreach around the world.

The Impact

This special episode of Ubongo Kids continues to broadcast every year, now in over 27 countries. While a specific impact study on this episode has not been done, it was included in a series of science episodes tested over 6 months with class 4-6 students in rural Morogoro. Students who watched the programs improved 5 percentage points in science tests, which included targeted questions about malaria, while those who were not exposed improved only 2 percentage points.

What’s more, the song “Get Your Bednets Out” has become a hit among our audience, and kids across the country know and sing the song.

“If you are looking to reach kids and families in Africa, Ubongo has the perfect platform and content to achieve your goals. We highly recommend working with Ubongo on your next behavior change communication project.” – Juilie Cege, Malaria No More