The Children’s Radio Foundation (CRF) provides young people with tools and skills to express their ideas and share their stories. Since its foundation in 2006 by Elizabeth Sachs, CRF has created a network of more than 1700 trained youth radio reporters across six countries in Africa, who broadcast on local and national radio stations and via social media. With offices in Cape Town, New York, and Oxford, CRF is a registered non-profit organisation in the US, the UK, and South Africa.

For its collaboration with Voice, CRF partnered with Jeunialissime, a grassroots LGBTI+ initiative based in Kinshasa and considered the first of its kind in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the beginning, Jeunialissime organised parties where LGBTI+ people could freely be themselves, and at the same time have discussions and debates on self-acceptance and well-being in general. Now, it is a vibrant emerging organisation openly advocating for the rights of LGBTI+ youth. In collaboration with CRF, Jeunialissime now employs radio and community-based journalists to raise awareness about the challenges that LGBTI+ people experience among the general public, in their efforts to change attitudes in society and contribute to building a more open society.

As one of the winners of the NOW-Us! Awards, Jeuniafrica uses radio, digital media and WhatsApp to raise public awareness of the rights of LGBTI+ communities and to combat the stigma directed against LGBTI+ people in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Through this project, local young reporters from Children’s Radio Foundation (CRF) and Jeunialissime, local organisations advocating for LGBTI+, and their allies from other community-based organisations, receive training in the use of radio as a tool to engage the general public in conversations about LGBTI+ issues.

The young reporters produce weekly radio shows highlighting a wide range of stories and experiences of the LGBTI+ community from a human rights perspective, to counteract the often negative and discriminatory messages coming from mainstream media outlets in DRC. These programmes are broadcasted in Lingala through local FM radio in Kinshasa, but also in French via SoundCloud and shared on several digital platforms. Additionally, these radio programmes are accompanied with face-to-face events to engage with the target audiences directly, such as:

• Popular exchanges with the general public in universities and other public places;
• Sensitisation workshops with mass influencers, such as religious leaders, journalists, lawyers, doctors, police officers, etc.
• LGBTI+ exchanges, workshops and events for capacity building and personal development.

This way, the Jeuniafrica Project radio shows open up a platform for LGBTI+ communities to raise their voices and work together to create a more inclusive society by changing the hearts and minds of the general public.

Through the Jeuniafrica project, beyond just practical solutions to support the LGBTI+ community, CRF and Jeunialissime address the root causes of social exclusion against LGBTQI+ people: the erroneous and negative perceptions that fuel anti-LGBTQI+ stigma and sentiments in DRC.

In 2018, the Jeuniafrica project was ranked second out of over 300 entries in the first edition of NOW-Us! Award in Amsterdam.