You’ve met the FarmQuest candidates. Now see them in action!

Last year, we excitedly announced the launch of FarmQuest, an innovative new reality radio program in Mali designed to encourage youth to consider farming as a career choice, and introduced you to the six youth competing to be named “best young farmer of the year.”

Broadcast between September and December of 2013, FarmQuest has come to an end — for now. The program enjoyed strong listenership across the target region and high ratings from the audience, which included a large number of youth. It also demonstrated that reality radio can effectively support a large number of listeners, improve knowledge and attitudes related to farming and change how local agricultural services are provided and accessed. We hope to utilize this new format in our work again soon.

In the meantime, we are very happy to share a series of videos about the project produced by documentary filmmaker Erica Pomerance, who led the production of the 12 FarmQuest episodes, in partnership with broadcasters from Radio Fanaka.

The first video in the series, shared above, provides an introduction to the FarmQuest project, the candidates and their areas of focus, and Radio Fanaka broadcasters Fatagoma Sanogo and Salimata Kone. We hope you enjoy it and stay tuned for the next videos, to be posted soon! (If you just can’t wait for the next video, see below.)

Learn more about about FarmQuest by checking out the following links:

– FarmQuest videos

– FarmQuest audio (in Bambara with English transcripts)

– “Can a reality show really deliver aid to Africa?” (article in the Toronto Star by Marc Ellison)

– FarmQuest project page

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