Karaoke in Cambodia

NPR had a great segment last month about how karaoke videos are teaching safe water techniques in Cambodia. Mickey Sampson of Resource Development International Cambodia saw that there was a small village near his home where a number of kids were dying from diarrhea caused by bacteria from their wells. The people of the village could not read and were accepting water born disease as a way of life. One day he heard a villager singing the Barney song, “I love you, you love me.” He realized that they were learning new songs through karaoke videos. Sampson, thought outside the box and created a karaoke video that tells the story of love with information about the dangers of arsenic and bacteria in some hand-dug wells. They drive karaoke vans around to villages and are spreading the message subliminally to the villagers to solve the problem.

Mickey is doing a few things right:

1. He is thinking outside the box. He understands that brochures and verbal warnings are not going to solve the problem.
2. He is speaking their language. How are people learning? How are they receiving information and spreading information. That is where he needed to put his message!
3. He delivered the message to the villagers in their ‘world view.’ It was critical that he had a persuasive message, since they were beginning to accept this problem as a way of life. He had to speak to their emotional side, in a way comfortable to them, to change their point of view. He did this through the story of love portrayed in the Karaoke video.

When approaching a difficult marketing problem, think about Karaoke in Cambodia. If you need to spread a message to your village/tribe, think outside the box, speak their language and to their world view.

Listen to NPR recording here.

Comments

[wow magic sing]

Interesting article thank you so much for bringing up this i really enjoyed reading.

reign

[Jon]

They are taught how to gather rain water and filter the rain water throught the pots Mickey designed. Rain water is clear of arsenic.

[Rebecca Goldstein]

It is a sad story, but several well intended groups went into these villages and drilled wells. They have ceramic water filters that protect against bacteria, but it does not protect against arsenic. The video is actually a subliminal message to spend a dollar to have the wells tested. See details below (from NPR recording).

If their only source for water was contaminated, I would think/hope that Resource Development International who helped create the video would help find a new resource for drinking water.

Karaoke song:
The karaoke video is a song about a woman singing to her husband it goes something like this, "(W) You are a great husband for giving me this well. (H) I drilled this well because I love you. But we need to do one more thing before we drink this water. There is something else you should know about: there is something called arsenic and it has no odor or color and we need to spend one dollar to test our well to make sure we are safe."
As story unfolds the well is tested and find out that it contains arsenic so they paint the well red so everyone knows it is not for drinking.

[Daniel]

Sorry for beeing a bit anti-climax but how does the knowledge spreaded by videos help the locals with the infected-water problem??
OK, so they know now what was killing them but I suppose there are no alternative water-sources near villages and they're also poor enough to not afford mineral water. Now what?