New Study Confirms: Yalaleke Guzo Is Changing Minds on FGM and Child Marriage in Ethiopia

A new peer-reviewed study published in BMC Public Health titled “Effectiveness of a Multimedia Campaign in Shifting Community Knowledge, Attitudes, Social Norms, and Practices of Female Genital Mutilation and Child Marriage in Ethiopia”— one of the world’s leading open-access public health journals — has confirmed what our team in Ethiopia has long believed: storytelling can move communities toward abandoning harmful practices, even ones that have persisted for centuries.

The study evaluated Yalaleke Guzo (“Unfinished Journey”), the flagship radio talk show at the heart of our multi-year social and behavior change campaign, implemented in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) across four woredas in southern Ethiopia — Mareko, Dalocha, Esera, and Dasenech — from January 2020 to June 2025.

Why This Work Matters

Female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage remain widespread in Ethiopia despite being illegal for decades. Nationally, an estimated 65% of women and girls — roughly 25 million people — have undergone FGM, and about 40% of girls are married as children. These are not fringe practices; they are woven into economic pressures, marriageability myths, and religious and social norms that laws alone have not been able to unravel.

That’s the gap Yalaleke Guzo was built to close.

A Campaign Built on Story and Scale

Over 215 episodes, Yalaleke Guzo reached millions of listeners through the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation and local FM stations. It was reinforced by radio and television spot messages, community listener groups where neighbors could talk through what they’d heard, social and digital outreach that reached more than three million people, and capacity-building workshops with 1,800 participants on the ground.

What the Research Found

An independent evaluation conducted in May 2025 combined a survey of 403 people (205 who had been exposed to the campaign and 198 who had not) with 70 participants across eight focus group discussions and eight in-depth interviews. The results, among community members reached by the campaign compared with those who weren’t:

• Awareness of FGM and child marriage: 93.2% vs. 84.6%
• Anti-FGM attitudes: 90.2% vs. 81.4%
• Anti-child-marriage attitudes: 83.4% vs. 78.1%

But the numbers only tell part of the story. Focus groups and interviews surfaced something more sobering: FGM has not disappeared so much as it has, in some cases, gone underground. Families under legal pressure are quietly relocating girls to other villages to have the procedure done out of sight. Awareness is rising — but old economic pressures, marriageability myths, and religious beliefs are still doing quiet, powerful work to sustain both practices.

“Beyond the survey numbers, our qualitative interviews and focus groups reveal why these harmful practices persist — including the sobering finding that FGM has shifted underground in response to legal pressure, with families quietly relocating girls for the procedure,” said Mary El-Afandi, Research, Evaluation, and Learning Specialist at PMC. “That kind of insight goes well beyond what statistics alone can show, and it points us toward what actually works: moving beyond individual attitude change toward collective, community-level norm change with things like inter-generational dialogue, male engagement, community enforcement, and integrated livelihood programs for girls.”

Looking Ahead

For our team, this study is confirmation that the model works — and a roadmap for what comes next. Real, lasting change means going beyond shifting what individuals believe, toward shifting what whole communities accept and enforce together: scaling dialogue between generations, engaging men and boys directly, building community-level accountability, and pairing awareness with real economic alternatives for girls and their families.

“The most important finding is empirical proof that a well-designed, mass-media multimedia campaign can help shift deeply entrenched, centuries-old social norms like FGM and child marriage,” said Kumilachew Melak, Measurement, Evaluation, and Learning Specialist in PMC’s Ethiopia office. “This isn’t just about raising awareness. The data shows a measurable shift in community attitudes. It proves that media isn’t merely entertainment; it’s a measurable catalyst for behavioral change.”

He added: “This study offers a scalable blueprint. By showing how we blended media reach with community accountability, and by backing it with rigorous evaluation, we give other organizations and researchers frameworks they can confidently apply to their own public health and human rights work worldwide. Publication is not the endgame — it’s a launchpad for even more ambitious campaigns to protect and empower communities.”

A Global Platform for Local Work

BMC Public Health is a top-quartile (Q1) journal in its field and one of the largest and longest-running open-access public health journals in the world, published continuously since 2001. Having this work validated and published there means the lessons learned in Mareko, Dalocha, Esera, and Dasenech are now available to policymakers, researchers, and practitioners everywhere — proof that community-rooted storytelling, rigorously measured, can be a model far beyond Ethiopia’s borders.

Read the full study in BMC Public Health. Effectiveness of a multimedia campaign in shifting community knowledge, attitudes, social norms, and practices of female genital mutilation and child marriage in Ethiopia | BMC Public Health | Springer Nature Link