Population Media Center is soon going to broadcast a series of sketches for helping Burundian people change their behaviour. Filmmakers have already got training sessions. Thanks to the latter, beneficiaries are proud of the offered guidance.-By Diane Uwimana
Jean Bosco Ndayishimiye: “While working, we will comply with the Burundian culture and behaviour. People’s qualification and illiteracy will also be considered.”
Population Media Center takes origin in USA. From 2013 to 2016, the center has the main objective of changing Burundian mentality through movies. The training sessions will mainly focus on health -malnutrition, planning family and improving mothers’ health- gender equality and fighting against HIV/AIDS. According to Jean Bosco Ndayishimiye, Burundi Representative, the center now operates in 47 countries worldwide. “We work in partnership with two ministries, in charge of Health and Solidarity, Human rights as well as Gender,” says Ndayishimiye. He underlines that the center is supported by different organisations such as UNICEF, UNFPA, PSI, Legal Family Foundation and WFP. Nowadays, different filmmakers are getting training on how to produce movies which are going to be broadcast on different local radios. “While working, we will comply with the Burundian culture and behaviour. People’s qualification and illiteracy will also be considered,” adds Ndayishimiye. Population Media Center to change bad behaviour into good According to Ndayishimiye, the center will work in partnership with four local radios which are Isanganiro, Bonesha FM, National Radio and African Public Radio (RPA). “Those movies are going to be broadcast twice a week. They will go to be divided into 208 units in three years,” he states. In order to facilitate the movies’ broadcasting, he says that the center is going to choose a pertinent time for a very large audience. “Our main objective is to change the bad behaviours into good ones”, he underlines. At this moment, the center is training filmmakers and next actors will be trained. “The only request for the candidates is to have a nice voice and reading skills’ competence. Regarding gender or age, it is not our concern,” he mentions. He indicates that the center prefers to use the unknown people’s voices to attract many listeners because they will probably consider movies as reality and not fiction. For instance, many things have changed about different activities run in several hospitals; the number of patients has increased due to different sensitization campaigns through communication. Beneficiaries have got some advantages Micheline Ndayikunda, one of the trainees, reveals that the training has a great importance. “We learn many things related to our daily life, such as family planning, gender equality, etc. About editing, the training has benefited me because it wasn’t in my mind and surprisingly enough I liked it. We are going to mix writing and playing sketches,” thanks Ndayikunda. Although, the training plays a major role, she states that the important thing is to get where to practice. For Thaddée Nzigamasabo, another trainee, there is some improvement on how to write. “I was a filmmaker before taking part in this training. I have found out that the new method we have acquired is more interesting than the one I had”, comments Nzigamasabo. He states that before this new writing method acquisition, filmmakers would focus much more on giving moral lessons to the audience. “But now, the filmmakers do not give any moral lesson, the listeners find it themselves after hearing. If an actor does bad things, the audience automatically refers to him/her in order to change mindset. All themes are related to human beings’ daily life”, concludes Nzigamasabo.
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