The HIV/AIDS epidemic among Tanzanian youth puts a premium on introducing effective tools for informing, communicating with, and educating young people. Youth Aware Trust Fund believes that a Youth FM Radio Station is the most powerful and cost-effective intervention to achieve this, complementing ongoing efforts to upgrade facilities for general education and training. In as much as teaching resources in the primary and secondary schools are very limited and cannot quickly expand to meet the new need for reproductive health education, Youth FM Radio will fill this critical need through its AIDS Awareness programs and through distribution of radio receivers to the schools.

By using the Youth Participatory Approach (YPA) in the ownership, operation, and management of Tanzania Youth FM Radio, young people will be energized both to produce and to learn from the radio programs about HIV/AIDS that the station will broadcast as a priority in its initial years of operation.

More generally, looking at the long-run problem of youth and development in Tanzania, the Youth Aware Trust Fund believes that giving powerful voice to youth, through media that they can manage and operate, can transform the prevailing youth passivity into youth leadership of social change. At present in Tanzania, the medium best suited to this purpose is radio. Youth television and e-media will surely follow in due course. On issues where constructive debate is most difficult (including reproductive health), youth can communicate best with adults through the medium of creative, careful, and inspired radio programming in which the youth themselves take a leading role. In this way, beliefs, attitudes, and habits (of youth as well as adults) may be constructively modified.

Technical, financial and social realities in Tanzania support the case for a focus on non-commercial youth radio. First, more Tanzania youths can afford radio receivers than any other competitive equipment. Second, most young people will listen to, and participate in, radio broadcasts during prime time (early morning and evening), which is now dominated by commercial advertisements. Thus, public (non-commercial) radio with a focus during prime time on the burning youth issues would create a unique opportunity for social impact. This impact can be leveraged nation-wide through the Youth AIDS Awareness Clubs, which the Youth Aware Trust Fund in sponsoring along with other organizations. Third, the sponsorship of Youth FM Radio creates (for local, national and international organizations, both private and official) opportunities to give back to the community some financial help, in recognition of the fact that Youth FM Radio builds future business and accelerates development.

Finally, Youth FM Radio will build opportunities for the youthful leadership of Tanzania to emerge on the international stage, through sharing experiences with other youth radio stations worldwide. Thus, Tanzania’s young people will participate in the media professionalism that already exists at the international level. Exchange programs, programs for volunteer work and for foreign study, and for inviting young foreigners to pursue work and study at Tanzania Youth FM Radio will emerge.