During the summer of 2003, I gained experience completing an internship at Soul City, Institute for Health and Development Communication in Johannesburg, South Africa. This organization is a multi-media health promotion and social change project. Through drama and entertainment Soul City reaches over 16 million South Africans.

Soul City is a non-governmental organization that began its work in South Africa in 1992, during a time of great political change. They work to produce two television dramas, Soul City (targets all ages) and Soul Buddyz (targets eight to twelve year olds), radio dramas, and print materials. All mediums are used to address selected health and development topics.

My charge in my internship at Soul City was to assist in the formative research process to inform the upcoming series, series seven. The entire series development process takes over 18 months to complete. The part of the series development process I was most involved in was the message design process. The topic areas being addressed during my time at Soul City were HIV/AIDS treatment literacy, Cancer of the Cervix, Service/Volunteerism, Health and Equity, and Manhood, many of which will be integrated into Soul City series seven.

During my time at Soul City, I assisted in conducting multiple stakeholder consultations, attended and participated in message design workshops, completed several message design briefs, and attended an incredible workshop on sexuality that was held at the Women's Health Project. I was also involved in the analysis of focus group research conducted on each of the topic areas for the upcoming Soul City series.

My time spent assisting with stakeholder consultations was extremely interesting. It gave me a good sense of the type of work being conducted in South Africa around the topic areas mentioned above. It also gave me an understanding of how different organizations worked or failed to work together as well as where there was duplication of work and/or possible gaps to fill. Furthermore, I had the opportunity to meet amazing people doing incredible work, such as Dr. Glenda Gray at the Perinatal HIV Research Unit (PHRU) at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. The PHRU is actively involved in many clinical trials, including a HIV vaccine trial. The stakeholder consultations set the stage for my understanding of the South African context for the topics being addressed, which helped me a great deal in the later stages of the message design process.

Soul City conducted five message design workshops in August and September. During the workshops, stakeholders were brought together to help Soul City in creating messages for the upcoming drama series, radio programs and print materials. The discussions and raw messages developed during these workshops were then put into message briefs, along with information from literature reviews and focus group research conducted by Soul City. I was responsible for drafting three message briefs (Cancer of the Cervix, Service/Volunteerism, and HIV/AIDS Treatment Literacy) following the message design workshops. This process often involved taking ideas presented by stakeholders at these workshops and transforming these ideas into simple messages. Gaining a greater understanding through conducting stakeholder consultations and reviewing focus group research, earlier in the summer (South Africa's winter), of the current state of knowledge around the topic areas, assisted in my ability to recognize when messages may need to be simplified to aid in the audience's understanding. The messages created through this process will ultimately be integrated into scripts for the Soul City television drama series and radio programs, and will also be used in print materials.

I found my experience at Soul City to be extremely valuable. It gave me an opportunity to work at an exciting organization that uses the media to address important health and development issues. I learned a great deal about the work that can go into designing messages and how research plays a significant part in this process. It also gave me my first experience working internationally. I want to thank Bixby Program in Population and Reproductive Health and the Drabkin Fund for making this opportunity possible.