c. Distribution strategies

A team approach

Ideally, the Scenarios contest is carried out by a consortium of organizations working together. A team-based approach facilitates the creation of field-tested partnerships between the structures in question. A collaborative strategy also serves to heighten the visibility of a number of organizations at the same time. It helps to ensure that the contest reaches many different groups of the population, across the entire project zone. Such an approach also means that the contest is conducted in direct proximity to the young people themselves and opens up more and diverse possibilities for them to establish direct lines of communication with specialized resources in their area.
Here are a few of the characteristics that you might bear in mind when putting together the team that will distribute contest documents and, later on, collect the young people_s contributions and bring or send them to the location where selection will take place:
C An ability and willingness to work together (team orientation; shared philosophy) and to actively promote other partner structures as potential resources
C Capability to reach certain target populations effectively (identified in advance by the planning team; e.g.: young women, out-of-school youth_)
C Collective ability to cover the entire geographic territory comprehensively, including urban and rural areas
C Multiplier potential, i.e., potential of adding even greater breadth to the team by persuading other structures to participate in distribution/collection
C Genuine availability during contest dates.
We would also recommend that you try to leave the door open to organizations that spontaneously volunteer themselves to help out with the contest. Here in Senegal, the Scenarios team benefited enormously from the unsolicited support of many structures, including PLAN International, Peace Corps, the NGO Africa Consultants International, the Fan Club of the music star Youssou Ndour, as well as local associations such as Avenir de l_Enfant, Hibiscus, and the Association des Jeunes Catholiques de Darou-Rahmane.
In Scenarios from the Sahel, Senegal was the country that offered the best example of a team approach to the contest. In this country, the project coordinators arranged for the printing of a certain number of contest leaflets and then delivered them to the Dakar offices or representatives of partner organizations assisting in the contest. Those organizations then distributed them in the field, throughout the country. When, after a few weeks, it became clear that demand for the contest leaflet was very strong, and stocks in the field were running low, the coordinators had more leaflets printed. At the end of the contest, the partner organizations transported the young people_s contributions back to Dakar, often pooling their efforts.

Fortunately, and thanks in no small part to the generous attitude of contest partners who collaborated on a volunteer basis, we were able to respond to unexpectedly high demand for the contest materials in Senegal by having a few thousand more printed and still stay (just) within our budget for that project element. However, we ask ourselves what we would have done had the demand been even greater. For a moment there, we feared that we might be creating interest among young people, but dashing their hopes by being unable to furnish them with contest materials. We see three possible solutions in the event that contest materials are running out (at either a macro level or at a micro, community level):
C Have partner organizations encourage young people to photocopy the materials (a costly and also otherwise inaccessible option for many people in this region);
C Have participants share the existing leaflets, and ask those who have no leaflet to write out the questionnaire by hand;
C Subject to prior agreement with a flexible funder, request additional funds to cover especially high demand and print more materials.
Please note that we did not make any use of the Internet at all as part our distribution and collection strategy for the Scenarios from the Sahel contest. For replicators in zones where the Internet is widely used by young people, that medium could well open up attractive opportunities to get contest materials into the hands of thousands of participants at very little cost.
Publicizing the contest: the media
During Scenarios from the Sahel, we have seen repeatedly that people from all walks of life and from all professions are eager to contribute with great enthusiasm to efforts to stop the epidemic. Journalists and radio/television hosts are certainly no exception.
The media can help to achieve multiple objectives in the contest of the project. They can help generate interest among young people for the contest (this is especially true of the specialized media: youth magazines and newspapers, and radio and television programs for young people). Furthermore, the media can help to create an enabling environment for the contest itself by explaining its context and aims to the public at large.
Partners in the media can also help the Scenarios team:
C to thank existing funders publicly and to encourage others to commit to supporting the project;

C to inform other individuals and organizations working in the area of the project and its intended outputs;
C to start to generate public and official interest in the project_s subsequent elements;
C and to begin to lobby their peers in television to support extensive, free broadcasts of the Scenarios films.
Working with the media in the course of the contest offers many advantages, but there a few potential stumbling blocks that your team might want to bear in mind:
C Space is limited in newspapers, and radio and television time can be precious. So, journalists might be tempted to oversimplify when they address the issue of who is carrying out the project and mention only the coordinators. It is important that special care be taken to emphasize to journalists that the project is a broad-based effort, with a central role played by local structures and young people. Excessive emphasis on the coordinators in media reports would not reflect the reality of the project and, if they are a non-local structure, could lead the public to view the final audio-visual products with detachment rather than affinity.
C Another stumbling block to beware of is that your partners in the media might just do their job too well and create overwhelming, potentially unfulfillable demand for contest documents.

If you plan on carrying out the contest in collaboration with large numbers of local organizations, i.e., in a highly decentralized fashion, and if you plan to make use of mass media to publicize the contest, what precisely are your journalist friends to say when they address the issue of where aspiring participants can find the contest materials in their area? There are at least two ways to answer this question:
- You can set up a central phone number that young people can call to find out who your local partners are in their area, and you can then ask journalists to mention that number.
- You can deposit a consultable list of your local partners at, for example, the reception desks of all national health education centers across the country and request that your media partners state that in their reports.

In many countries it would be feasible for the contest to be publicized uniquely via the media, and for contest leaflets to be sought and entries returned uniquely via the postal service. However, we feel this anonymous procedure would represent a real impoverishment of the Scenarios process and a serious reduction of the project_s potential for meaningful and sustainable impact.
When planning your publicity program, remember to contact the editors of magazines far in advance. You might otherwise miss their deadlines.
Furthermore, remember not to use up all your ammunition (publicity budget...) at the beginning of the contest. If the contest is to last a period of, say, two months, it is essential that you be in a position to remind and remotivate as time goes by and, if need be, readjust your original strategy so as to reach specific groups or areas more effectively.
Publicizing the contest: the opening press conference
Holding a press conference on or just before the launch date of the contest is an outstanding way to achieve a wide variety of important objectives:
C Get the media on board as full-fledged partners in the project. The press conference is an opportunity to remind them of their power and responsibilities with regard to the HIV epidemic, and also to establish good press relationships for the duration of the project. By getting them enthusiastically on board, you might just secure extensive, free media coverage for the contest phase and beyond.
C Enhance the visibility of the project partners in the context of Scenarios, and facilitate the establishment of direct, hopefully long-term links between media representatives and partner structures. Make sure that the press conference is arranged in such a way and at a time of day that journalists would feel encouraged to spend some relaxed time afterwards with project team members. It might, for example, be a good idea to provide drinks afterwards.
C Illustrate to the media that what is taking place is a highly participatory, broad-based endeavor, with scores of individuals and structures working together in close partnership. Toward this end, you might want to invite as many members of the larger Scenarios team as possible to the press conference. We experienced that it was at this event that many of our partners realized for the first time the magnitude of what was happening and the fact that the team behind the project was indeed so vast. Seeing was believing.
C Drive home the point that this is not a commercial venture. One way to underscore that point is not to hold the press conference in an expensive, luxury setting.
C Thank the funders and sponsors who are behind the project.

The Scenarios from the Sahel opening press conference was a big success, and that was largely due to the assistance of a friend of ours named Edmond Bagdé, a journalist from Chad who had been working in Senegal for years, specializing in HIV/AIDS. We would strongly recommend that you solicit the support of a media insider who, like Edmond, could help with several essential tasks related to the press conference: drafting the press release and distributing it through the proper channels, at the right time, to the right people; selecting, inviting, and securing the participation of journalists who work for key media institutions and who would be inclined to be receptive to Scenarios; and selecting an appropriate timeslot for the conference.
Here in the Sahel, and perhaps also in your zone, there are networks of journalists that can be mobilized for events such as Scenarios: networks of women journalists (such as the Dakar-based African Women_s Media Center, a project of the International Women_s Media Foundation), and networks of journalists in population issues (UNFPA has set up such a structure here).
In the wake of the press conference, the project team has a perfect opportunity to test and, if need be, refine the system that has been established to monitor media coverage of the project.
Publicizing the contest: T-shirts
In this region, we discovered that T-shirts are an excellent means to increase awareness of the project, a much-appreciated way to bolster a sense of collective project ownership among team members, and a popular prize for the contest winners. Furthermore, T-shirts are a good way to enhance the visibility of the project logo and to let the public know which funders are behind the project. Think of them in terms of mobile advertisements. Among a group of teenagers, you can imagine the impact if a role-model peer is seen wearing one.
We learned that it pays to take time to make the project T-shirt really attractive to young people. Ask the screen-printer to run you off a _proof_ copy for you to approve. The company that did the Scenarios from the Sahel T-shirts did such a fine job that we have often heard, _This is my all-time-favorite shirt! I wear it all the time._
Make sure that the T-shirts are ready at such a time that they can be distributed along with contest materials and at the press conference. Members of community-based organizations who helped out with the distribution of the contest materials said that the T-shirt was a big motivator to them personally and helped people in their communities associate them with the project.

One final comment on T-shirts: We found that we were able to negotiate a significant reduction in the unit cost of the shirts when we offered to allow the screen-printing company to put their logo on one of the sleeves.
Publicizing the contest: posters
Posters might be a good, inexpensive way to raise awareness about the contest and to inform prospective participants as to where they can find contest materials. They are also another opportunity to enhance the visibility of and express gratitude to funders and sponsors.
You could collect ideas for poster design and raise awareness at the same time by asking an art school in the project zone to request (or require as a class assignment) that students submit ideas.
The posters could contain general information on the contest as well as an empty space where the local partner structure could write in its own contact information. This is another way to reinforce a sense of ownership among local partners and to create in the communities a feeling that this contest is not something imposed from elsewhere, but rather a profoundly local endeavor.
_We_ve got to strive for decentralization. If activities are overly centralized, they just come and go, and nothing is left behind. What good is that?_

Henk Van Remtergheim, UNFPA/Burkina Faso

The local partners themselves would choose where they would like to put up the posters, placing a premium on those places where the posters would not be damaged by vandalism or the elements, or stolen. Here in the Sahel, that might mean, for example: inside neighborhood bread kiosks, small neighborhood shops, snack bars near schools, at the reception area of sport complexes, or inside classrooms. Other possible locations that shouldn_t be forgotten include health and family planning centers, condom distribution points, etc.