HFPA-World Bank Global Forum: Preventing Violence Against Women and Girls Through Edutainment

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a global epidemic. Worldwide, 1 in 5 girls are married before turning 18, and 1 in 3 women have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lives. COVID-19 lockdowns have worsened this global crisis. Most VAWG prevention programs are delivered through resource-intensive grassroots mobilization campaigns. Those campaigns produce mixed results at best, and scaling up their implementation is often prohibitively expensive in low-resource settings.

Following a first forum in July 2022 on Innovative Partnerships between the Entertainment and Development Sectors, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) and the World Bank DIME Narrating Behavior Change program held a second forum to increase awareness on the effectiveness of edutainment when it comes to fighting VAWG. This forum discussed five randomized control trials in India, Mexico, Uganda, and Nigeria (north and south), that demonstrate that edutainment delivered through TV, movies, radio or social media can be a cost-effective tool to reshape gender norms and prevent VAWG in developing countries.

Research alone will not change the world.  The research presentations were followed by a panel of edutainment partners that are shaping the entertainment and development industries in the world’s entertainment capitals. These edutainment partners discussed their innovative public-private initiatives that are helping combat gender stereotypes and prevent VAWG in developing countries.

Speakers

	Axel van Trotsenburg Managing Director of Operations, World Bank
	Arianna Legovini Director, Development Impact Evaluation, World Bank
	Neil Phillips Chief Diversity Officer, HFPA
	Wilmah Munemera Actor and Activist
	Victor Orozco Senior Economist and Edutainment Lead, World Bank
	Eliana La Ferrara Professor, Harvard University
	Poonam Muttreja Executive Director, Population Foundation of India
	Eric Arias Economist, World Bank
	Salome Aloo Kenya Country Director, Impact(Ed) International
	Anna Wilke Assistant Professor, Washington University in St. Louis

FAQ about Development and Edutainment Research

1. What is edutainment?
   Edutainment, short for entertainment-education, is the use of entertainment media with educational and development objectives. Its modern origins began with Mexican soap operas in the late 1960s, a unique collaboration between psychologist Albert Bandura and drama producer Miguel Sabido. Edutainment includes movies, television shows, documentaries, social media campaigns, music, and games. Generally, edutainment can be publicly funded with sharing educational messages as the main goal, or commercially funded with sharing messages as the secondary goal.
   
2. What is impact evaluation?
   Impact evaluations aim to understand in a causal manner the impact, or effect, of a program or policy on an outcome we’re interested in. For example, what is the impact of a television drama on rates of HIV testing? In this example, impact evaluation would compare rates of HIV testing for groups of people who view the television drama to those who don’t. Experimental evaluations, or randomized controlled trials, provide high-quality comparison groups and therefore credible estimates of the impact. 
3. What is the World Bank?
   With 189 member countries, staff from more than 170 countries, and offices in over 130 locations, the World Bank Group is a unique global partnership: five institutions working for sustainable solutions that reduce poverty and build prosperity in developing countries. The World Bank Group is one of the world’s largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries. The World Bank Group is part of the United Nations System. To learn more, visit the World Bank website.
4. What are the Sustainable Development Goals?
   The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a model for peace and prosperity, now and into the future. At its heart are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries—developed and developing—in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty must go hand in hand with improving health and education, reducing inequality, and spurring economic growth—all while tackling climate change and preserving our oceans and forests. To learn more, visit the United Nations SDGs website.
5. What is the World Bank Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) Department?
   DIME produces high-quality data and research to transform development policy, reduce extreme poverty, and secure shared prosperity. The department conducts research in 60 countries with 200 agencies, leveraging a $180 million research budget against $18 billion in development finance. It also advises 30 development agencies worldwide. To learn more, visit the DIME website.
6. What is the World Bank Narrating Behavior Change program?
   Founded in 2016, the World Bank DIME Narrating Behavior Change program (DIME-NBC) is a collaboration between researchers and practitioners from governments, the World Bank, development agencies, and media firms. The program aims to both increase our knowledge of edutainment across multiple development sectors, and scale up edutainment in development investments.
   Working in the “Hollywoods of the world”—the entertainment hubs of Nigeria, India, and Mexico, among others—the program works with leading think tanks and media firms, including the MTV Staying Alive Foundation, Impact(Ed) International (formerly Discovery Learning Alliance), Meta (formerly Facebook), the Population Foundation of India, BBC Media Action, Cinepolis, IN2, Curious Learning, and the Hollywood Health & Society program at the University of Southern California. Superstar celebrities from Nollywood (Desmon Elliot and Otomola Ekehinde), Bollywood (Farhan Akhtar), and academia (MIT Professor Abhijit Banerjee, DIME co-author and 2019 Nobel Laureate in Economics) have supported DIME-NBC research and events. To learn more, visit the World Bank Narrating Behavior Change website.
   
   
7. What are examples of high-impact edutainment?
   By high-impact, we mean that impact evaluations found that this programming greatly impacted the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of audiences in developing countries. And in some cases, even had impacts on other community members that were indirectly exposed to this media (for example, family or friends viewed the programming). These examples improved outcomes related to HIV, gender-based violence, aspirations, gender equality, and learning.
   • MTV Shuga (TV drama produced by the MTV Staying Alive Foundation that included in its early seasons Golden Globe and Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o).
   • Queen of Katwe (Movie produced by Walt Disney Pictures, ESPN Films, Cine Mosaic, Mirabai Films, and Participant Media).
   • My Better World (Docu-series produced by Impact(Ed), formerly Discovery Learning Alliance).
   • Court of Sex (TV drama produced by Population Foundation of India).
   • Feed The Monster (Gamified app produced by Curious Learning).
8. What is the Hollywood Foreign Press Association?
   The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) is a nonprofit organization of journalists and photographers who report on the entertainment industry activity and interests in the United States for media predominantly outside the U.S. With over 100 members from more than 50 countries, HFPA conducts the annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony in Los Angeles every January, which honors notable film, television, and other entertainment achievements. In 2021, the Golden Globes generated more social media impressions (1.6 billion) and positive sentiments (91 percent) than any other LA entertainment awards. The HFPA Philanthropy arm supports entertainment-related nonprofit organizations, academic programs, and humanitarian organizations across developed and developing countries. To learn more, visit the HFPA Golden Globe Awards website.
9. What are the HFPA-World Bank global forums?
   The HFPA-World Bank global forums aim to promote the growth of edutainment programming worldwide. They will tackle issues such as harnessing the power of entertainment and popular culture to support development goals and help educate, empower, and motivate communities to action. While previous World Bank forums have focused on publicly funded productions for audiences in developing countries (see World Bank forum “Using Entertainment Media to Reach the SDGs”), the new HFPA-WB forums will explore the challenges and opportunities for public-private partnerships to scale up investments in edutainment, including with the LA-based industry and its celebrities.