Provide Tech Health Solutions for Nigerian Youth

Since we started the My Question service in 2007, we have received approximately 955,000 text messages. In our push to reach a million text messages, we have started to think more strategically about how we market the service to adolescents and young people.  Over the years we have designed communication materials like flyers and poster to share in schools and youth gathering all over Nigeria.  We recently conducted focused group discussion with young people to get their opinions about the materials we have used in the past.

"The flyers you have now just only show females.  It needs a male picture to be included to show that the services is for both males and females.  You can also include a dramatic cartoon art that is attractive with relevant messages." - Idris 16 years, out-of-school male.

"I would love to see a young person and a counselor talking confidentially for people to know it is an interactive thing.  It also need to be more colorful" - Mary 14 years, out of school female. 

From this feedback, we have realized it is time for change!

We have created three new flyers in the cartoon series.  These flyers help to re-enforce the fact that it is a good source of help for pressing health concerns for young people and also stresses the point that the service is confidential.  We have also created them in both English and Hausa language to cater for the diversity of the communities we target.

We are happy to present the materials to you, fresh off the press.  For the next few months, we will be using these flyers for mobilizing young people to use the service, starting off in the North-Central zone of Nigeria. We are really looking forward to seeing how young people receive this materials and eventually an increase in the numbers that call or send us text messages.  

We will share for with you the results in the upcoming months.  We thank you for your continued support.

The Nigerian government and other NGOs are always in need for information and data about experiences and concerns of young people to develop policy and programs. With over 900,000 text messages directly from young people, My Question service has the potential to provide information to contribute to design of new programs or policies.  With the understanding of this gap, the project team worked with researchers from Population Council and One World, UK to conduct an analysis of questions sent to the service.  In August, a formal dissemination of the research findings was shared with over 21 organizations and government agencies working in Nigeria.  The meeting presented findings in a report titled, Myths and Misinformation: An Analysis of Text Messages Sent to My Question Platform for Young People.  It also provided an opportunity to get more organizations to help spread the word about the service to young people they support.  Some of these results have now been used by the government to develop a new strategic plan for prevention of HIV and AIDS amongst adolescents and young people.  The meeting was reported in two national newspapers.

Links:

• Nigerian Guardian Newspaper Report on Meeting
• Daily Trust Newspaper Article on Meeting

• Technical Report (PDF)