3. Scenarios contest methodologies

The following comments on contest methodologies are broken down into three sub-topics, namely:

• a. Determination of contest specifics


• b. Preparation of contest documents


• c. Distribution strategies

a. Determination of contest specifics

We are assuming that, before determining the contest specifics, the project team has already clearly formulated its objectives for the project. Each element of the contest specifics should be discussed with those objectives in the forefront of the planners' minds.
i. Agreement on contest rules
Your team needs to reach an agreement on the following points:
Age limits; age categories
In the case of Scenarios from the Sahel, the project planners decided to conduct a contest that would be open to all people aged 24 and under. We knew that we wanted to focus on "young people"; the difficult part was determining what the optimal upper age limit should be. The following thoughts guided our decision.
Given the educational and employment situation in this region today, as well as cultural considerations, there is no standard age when one leaves home and establishes one's independence as an "adult", either by pursuing post-secondary education or by formally entering the job market. (In the United States, for example, that standard age would be right around 18, i.e. when one finishes high school and probably leaves home.) In the Sahel, it is not possible to say that a specific age should be considered the moment of transition for young people in general.
We turned to UNAIDS documentation to help us shed light on the matter and found that that organization generally uses 24 as its upper limit when speaking about "young people". As we intended to incorporate into the project certain research components based on the participants' input, and as we hoped that the research results might be useful complements to existing studies, we chose as the upper limit the age most commonly used in relevant work.

Focus-group discussions carried out after the contest revealed that very young people (say, under the age of 13) had no problem at all with the fact that they had competed with people much older than themselves. However, the upper age limit came under heavy fire by people between the ages of 25 and 30, who said that they were frustrated that they had been excluded. They repeatedly emphasized that "we're young people, too -- why did you leave us out?"
One way to overcome this problem would be to have two categories for participants to choose from:
1) People under 25 (working alone or in a team with others under 25);
2) People under 25 working in a team with one person over the age of 25. The advantage of this category is that it would represent a built-in motivator for older people to discuss HIV/AIDS with youths in the framework of the contest.
The members of the selection committees often gave the contributions of the very young participants the highest marks, citing their truly innovative approaches to the subject at hand. They found that the youngest participants had fewer preconceptions; they were less concerned to demonstrate what they knew factually about HIV/AIDS and more eager to situate the epidemic in real-life situations.
"It's the youngest ones who come up with the most original stuff. As for the older ones -- really, they tend to talk like a bunch of medical doctors."

Dr. Oumar Traoré, psychologist, member of the National AIDS Control Program of Mali and chair of the Malian national selection committee

"The littlest kids, with the way they talk, express the way things are better than the older participants."

Dr. Aliou Sylla, CESAC/Mali, specialist in the care of people living with HIV, member of the Malian and final regional juries

The Scenarios from the Sahel contest was able to offer a level playing field for participants of all ages. In addition, the irrelevance of grammatical correctness or competence in spelling allowed it to offer a level playing field for those of different academic abilities or educational levels.

Participation in teams
Try to do everything you can to encourage and facilitate participation in teams. It is not only a way to reinforce dialogue among young people, but also a means to enable those not literate in the official language(s) of the contest to participate fully.
In the Scenarios from the Sahel contest, the level of team participation was most impressive in Mali, where well over half the contributions were written by groups, of which the vast majority included both young men and young women. Some of the teams in Mali were made up of over 100 young people! These phenomenal, totally unanticipated results were made possible by the coordinators of the contest in Mali, Mr. Wéléba Bagayoko and his staff at the EVF/EMP Project (a UNFPA-funded project associated with the Malian Ministry of Education and dealing with reproductive health and population issues). Mr. Bagayoko believes that the results can be explained by the fact that his organization had placed a premium on team-oriented effort in past contests, and that this had helped to establish a culture of collaboration among participants in his country.
Shortly after the contest began, Mr. Niangoran Essan of UNFPA, a key early supporter of the project, came to Senegal on an official visit. He expressed the concern that a contest in which young people are asked to write a scenario in French for a short film might end up being merely an exercise for the educated elite. We explained that there were a few mechanisms in place to avoid that kind of an outcome, one of them being the possibility of working in teams. As things turned out, we know that many young people who have not had the opportunity to attend school did indeed participate by working in a team with someone literate in French. Several of the national winners, and at least one of the winners at regional level, have never spent a day in school.
Admissible form of contributions
Allowing young people to present their contributions in the form of drawings or cartoons or on a cassette tape is another way to give as many people as possible a chance to take part, including those who are not able to write in the official contest language(s).
In the case of Scenarios from the Sahel, we received scores of contributions in the form of drawings, and a few on cassette tape. We had not explicitly mentioned the possibility of submitting a cassette, as we assumed that that would be too unusual and too expensive a proposition for the participants. We have since learned that "cassette letters" are a common form of correspondence in certain parts of the region.

By permitting young people to create contributions in a wide variety of forms _ not only actual film scenarios, but also short stories, monologues, dialogues, poems, songs, riddles, comics, drawings, cassette tapes _ and by explicitly stating these possibilities in the contest leaflet, you are making the contest less daunting and more accessible to potential participants. In addition, if young people are allowed to produce their contributions in the form with which they feel most comfortable, there is a better chance that they will express their thoughts and feelings more thoroughly and vividly.
Allowing diverse forms of contributions has a number of advantages, but it also means that you must take care to set up selection mechanisms that ensure that all kinds of contributions are given equal treatment.
Official contest language(s) for written contributions
The project zone of Scenarios from the Sahel has one common language, namely French, and that was the sole official language of the contest. Although some people expressed regrets that they were not able to write their contributions in a local, African language, everyone understood that, in light of two specific reasons, it was logistically not possible to open up the contest to non-French texts. First, it would be extremely difficult and costly to organize national and (even trickier) regional selection processes in which each scenario were given equal treatment if jurors were confronted with texts that had to be translated before they could understand them. Second, the archiving and text-analysis process would be rendered far more complex and expensive.
In certain countries, it might be desirable and logistically perhaps not too complicated or costly to carry out a bilingual contest, or perhaps two parallel contests/selection processes. The United States comes to mind, with English and Spanish as possible contest languages.
Length of contributions
In order to maintain fairness to all participants, it is important to be extremely specific as to the total number of pages (as opposed to sheets!) allowed. In the Scenarios from the Sahel contest, we also specified the paper size, asking participants to use sheets from a standard school notebook. Throughout the region, that size sheet is by far the most common and easily accessible, even in remote areas. It is also far smaller than an A4 sheet. If participants had been allowed to use A4 paper, those who did might have had an unfair advantage. The total number of pages allowed was ten, which would be the equivalent of about six A4 (or 8.5 x 11-inch) pages. This page limit did not receive any negative commentary from the participants themselves, and it has proven appropriate during the selection, research and film elements of the project. Many participants chose to write fewer than ten pages; some scenarios were half a page long.
If you are accepting cassettes, limit the number of total allowable minutes. For reasons of fairness, the maximum number of minutes should equal the amount of time it would take to read a scenario written on the maximum number of pages.

Mandatory nature of the questionnaire
The idea of seizing upon the opportunity presented by the Scenarios contest to collect data from participants was suggested by Annick Wouters, formerly at the UNICEF Regional Office in Abidjan, Côte d_Ivoire. She suggested that we could easily and at very little cost incorporate an information-seeking questionnaire into the contest process.
For this element of the project to serve its purpose in optimal fashion, it is essential that each participant or team leader fill in and submit the questionnaire with her or his scenario.
An added incentive for participants to do this is the fact that the questionnaire also serves the purpose of identifying the author or team leader to the organizers and providing their contact details; without that information, how could prizes be distributed to winners?
Firmness of the contest deadline
For reasons of fairness and of logistics, it is important to set a firm contest deadline. However, the Scenarios from the Sahel team did take on board contributions submitted after the closing date. They were not included in the selection process, but have been incorporated into the archives.
ii. Prizes
The issue of prizes was the subject of considerable research and debate among project partners during the planning phase of the Scenarios from the Sahel contest. The question was: What kind of prizes should be offered in order to maximize participation without accentuating the increasingly prevalent perspective in this region (founded in an unsustainable premise) that _there is cash in AIDS, so let_s get involved (while the cash register is open)_?
In the end, the decision was reached to offer rather modest prizes: a certificate and a T-shirt for each of the 150 national winners, and 50.000 FCFA _ roughly $100 _ for each of the 30 international winners. Small-scale additional prizes were offered in the various countries. The reasoning behind this was that young people would likely be motivated to participate primarily out of conviction. In addition, it was felt that if Scenarios were to offer more expensive prizes the project would be doing a disservice to others involved in public health education by over-materializing the issue and so making it more difficult for grass-roots structures to mobilize people with more modest prizes. That is to say, we were keen not to contribute to prize inflation.

We decided to place emphasis on cash prizes in the belief that this could help motivate family involvement, whereas more self-indulgent material incentives might alienate parents. The decision not to offer huge prizes was clearly a sound one. An astounding 13,000 young people took the time to participate in the contest. Focus-group discussions confirmed that the main reasons why people took part were:

C A desire to learn as much as possible about HIV/AIDS
C An urgent need to know how to protect oneself optimally
C A sense of responsibility to contribute to efforts to stop the epidemic
C The wish to speak out on certain related issues of particular concern (including both modern and traditional phenomena that are viewed as harmful in the presence of HIV)
C The possibility of receiving recognition for one_s work, perhaps even on television across the region

"Over 12,000 young people participated; it was almost like a craze! The prizes were really very modest. That means that the kids showed us their determination with regard to the fight against this pandemic. Young people are profoundly committed to this fight."

Victorine Yaméogo, PPLS/Burkina Faso, member of the Burkinabè national jury and the final, regional selection committee

Furthermore, it turned out that the idea of offering cash awards to the regional winners rather than tangible prizes (radios, books, backpacks...) was spot on. We asked three of the winners what they did with the money, and they said (with pride!):

_I gave it to my mother so that she could pay some utility bills._

_My dad has asthma and can_t work, so my family counts on me to help out with buying food whenever I can._

_My sister couldn_t go to school because the family didn_t have enough cash to pay her fees. When I got the money, we marched straight to her school and got her signed up. It_s wonderful! Now, she darn well better come up with some top-notch results; I really could have enjoyed myself with that money!"

iii. Agreement on contest dates
When your team discusses the date of the launch of the contest and the deadline for submitting contributions, please bear in mind the following:
C School exam periods. Try to avoid holding the contest during or too close to exam dates.
C Seasons featuring particularly harsh weather. In many parts of the world, the climate is such that there are times of the year when it is extremely difficult to move about. This could negatively impact upon the distribution and/or collection of contest materials and upon young people_s efforts to seek out and develop links with resources in their area.
C Religious observances. For the people of some faiths, it would not be respectful to encourage dialogue on intimate matters during certain periods.
C International AIDS day, international women_s day, national youth week.... The launch of the contest could be planned to coincide with such events. Or, if one of those events falls within the contest period, it could be a great opportunity to re-focus attention and provide context to the contest.
C The timetable of other HIV-related activities that might be complemented by the Scenarios contest.
C The timetable of other planned contests. Try to avoid scheduling the Scenarios contest at a time when it might overlap with another contest. Both could suffer as a result.
C Times of the year when people travel a lot. If one of the objectives of the contest is to facilitate the development of durable links with local resources, it is desirable to hold the contest at a time when young people are not likely to be traveling away from the place where they spend most of the year. In some regions, seasonal mobility can be extremely high.

The ideal duration of the contest will depend on the objectives you have set for this phase, the complexity of the task from the perspective of the participants, the amount of time it might take partner structures to reach out effectively to potential participants in remote areas, and your logistical ability to generate and maintain interest in the event. The Scenarios from the Sahel contest was scheduled to take place over a two-month period.