Hey Come with Us and Scrutinize (Eh!woza + Bhekisisa)

We aim to combine the strengths of Eh!woza, a growing public engagement NPO and Bhekisisa, donor-funded media startup that specialises in in-depth health journalism. Through this collaboration we will generate media that covering three themes: news and stories that highlight the lived experience and day-to-day impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on often marginalised groups, informational messaging that describes relevant public health data and information (including around vaccines), and positive stories that highlight the work that citizens and organisations are doing to address the pandemic with a message of hope and solidarity. Media will be accurate, relatable and responsive by combining the editorial strengths and dissemination reach of Bhekisisa with the community driven narrative, scientifically engaged and production expertise of Eh!woza. Moreover, all media will draw on important lessons gained from previous pandemics such as Ebola, Influenza, HIV and TB, which highlight that trust is key in delivering public health messages and that communities should be developed as partners in the production of knowledge so that messaging can become an antidote to stigma and misinformation. Importantly, the work developed over the course of this grant will have a strong emphasis on training and capacity development, in order to generate a cohort of young media producers that are able to communicate and tell stories about health and disease in a situationally relevant, accurate and technically high quality way. Thus, the capacity and collaborations developed during this COVID-19 work could be applied to other areas of health and disease (e.g. TB, HIV, non-communicable diseases) that are important in South Africa and neighbouring regions. Expected Outputs The expected outputs of the work described above include a series of short documentary films and news stories that describe the social-cultural experiences and perspectives of local communities impacted by COVID-19. As well as uncovering how people have been impacted by COVID-19, we aim to generate media that highlights the positive work that citizens, local organisations, leaders and activists have been doing to contribute to mitigation of the pandemic and it's social impact. It is anticipated that via the collaboration between Eh!woza and Bhekisisa, between six and twelve documentaries will be produced over the course of the grant. In addition to documentary films describing the lived experience of people impacted by COVID-19, we aim to produce informational animations and infographics together with local artist, Mitchell Gilbert Messina, to disseminate accurate biomedical and health information in a manner that is engaging and impactful. We aim to produce at least twelve accurate and information products over the course of the grant. Importantly, the work being done to generate the described media will form a key avenue for training and capacity development: Eh!woza's trainee cohort will produce the documentaries with guidance from Eh!woza management and the Bhekisisa team and the artist collaborator (Mitchell) will engage with trainees around messaging, semiotics and conceptual representation. Thus the development of skills around messaging, media production and dissemination, with a focus on health, will be an important additional outcome of this work