(CNN) — An unlikely superhero is coming to the rescue of a generation of young Kenyans.
Meet Boyie, a 19-year-old guy who has left school and can’t find a job. To keep himself busy he’s built an FM radio station in his bedroom and hacks into other programs in order to broadcast his show under his alter ego DJB.
Boyie is slowly taking over the hearts and minds of Kenyans across the country with Shujaaz.fm — a radio show, comic and lively online community. There’s even talk of his own television show.
But there’s a twist — Boyie is a fictional character, played by an actor.
Despite this, the team behind Shujaaz.fm says he has reached out to more people than any government or NGO has managed to in the past.
“We didn’t think there was anyone around having an interesting conversation with Kenyan youth,” explained Rob Burnet, director of Nairobi-based Well Told Story, the company behind the project.
“There was quite a lot of commercial media aimed at people with money in their pockets and there was very little for people who were younger and didn’t have any money and need access to bright ideas and inspiration,” he added.
Funded by a mixture of corporate sponsorship and international donors Shujaaz.fm is about getting messages out to young people, an important job in a country where nearly a third of the population is under 30.
Our first goal is to entertain our audience and be cool and be fun. –Rob Burnet, director, Well Told Story
“Shujaaz” means “heroes” in Sheng, a Kenyan combination of Swahili and English. Shujaaz.fm has only been broadcasting from Nairobi since the end of 2009 but it already reaches nearly a third of the young population in Kenya.
A survey carried out by the independent research company Synovate found that around 8 million Kenyans aged under 35 had read the comic and that around half of this group had heard of the radio show.
Through the lives of Boyie and his three fictional friends, Maria Kim who lives in a slum; a farmer’s son, Charlie Pele and rebellious teenager Malkia, they share their adventures and bright ideas with the masses.
Youngsters are educated about everyday topics such as farming, how to make money, human rights and staying out of trouble. But Burnet said the service’s one underlining rule is to always put the audience first.
“Our first goal is to entertain our audience and be cool and be fun. It’s not to deliver development ideas, that comes later,” said Burnet.
The radio show is broadcast daily on 22 FM stations nationwide and the storylines are continued in the monthly comic. The team says it is currently working on a daily television show as well.
“This last week we’ve been interviewing reformed Kenyan gangsters telling us about how they gave up the life of crime to get on with something good. We’ve also been talking recently about drunkenness and drug abuse,” said Burnet.
“We are guided by what we think our audience wants to know about us. The biggest topic young people want to talk about is how do you put a bit of money in your pocket, what cool ideas are out there that you could apply,” he continued.
The station’s audience is more than happy to tell DJB and his friends what they think. Fans interact with the characters like they are real people and, because the story lines are similar to their own lives, the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred.
He (DJB) is also trying to survive and make a responsible member of the community out of himself like every other young person out there. –Kades, actor who plays DJB.
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DJB receives 2,000 text messages a month and the characters have thousands of friends on Facebook who interact with them daily. If a fan has a bright idea they are invited to the show to tell others about it.
“DJB has become popular simply because he is true,” said Kades, the actor who plays Boyie in the radio show.
“His popularity is growing because he is not different from his fans in that he is not coming from a rich family. He is also trying to survive and make a responsible member of the community out of himself like every other young person out there,” he continued.
The story lines have mainly had an agricultural theme and a team of writers works closely with science organizations and citizen groups to make their message interesting.
“I speak to the experts to ensure that the right information goes into the stories,” explained Audrey Wabwire, a content producer for Shujaaz. “I speak to the audience to find out whether they understand the stories to ensure that the content remains relevant to them.”
Stuart Brown, from the NGO GALVmed, approached Shujaaz to raise the profile of livestock in Kenya and the vaccinations available for animals.
“They (Shujaaz) are phenomenally successful in their outreach and getting into rural communities,” he explained.
“The authenticity that Shujaaz offers underpins and legitimizes the information that needs to be communicated. The pictures, thinking and writing is produced by the very people they are addressing — it’s written and drawn by Kenyans,” he continued.
Shujaaz says its ability to spread often-complicated messages has begun attracting the attention of large technology companies, keen to reach out to young Kenyans.
But Burnet is quick to point out that they won’t work with all companies that approach them.
“We have an internal filter that makes us ask ‘does this story have a benefit to our audience?’ and if it doesn’t, we don’t do it,” he explained.
Kades said he wishes that he’d had a superhero like DJB when he was growing up.
He said: “If we had someone open and truthful like DJB most of my friends would not have been dead; the other half will not have wasted themselves in drugs and become parents in their early teenagehood.”
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