With the FHI/Senegal office, YouthNet developed a media-based HIV education and stigma-reduction campaign focusing on youth. The campaign sprung from the global HIV prevention campaign of Music Television (MTV) called Staying Alive 2002, which YouthNet helped coordinate. The global Staying Alive project was an opportunity for FHI/Senegal to build on its earlier work with the local media on HIV/AIDS issues. While Staying Alive globally reached audiences primarily through television, the Senegal project emphasized local programming over the radio. During the six-month campaign, from September 2002 to February 2003, more than 30 radio stations broadcast on HIV/AIDS issues several times a week, including interviews with young people.  A summary of the Senegal campaign appears in a report on the overall Staying Alive 2002 campaign and will be posted here this summer.

As part of YouthNet's evaluation of the MTV campaign in Senegal, it is conducting focus groups with young people, who are viewing both the global MTV materials and local programming. The Institute for Environmental Sciences at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Senegal is conducting the evaluation. The evaluation includes interviews with several groups of stakeholders, including media partners, government officials, and non-governmental partners in the campaign, about the process of developing and implementing the campaign.

FHI/Senegal formed an advisory committee to assess the global MTV materials and to develop a country-based campaign, working with two media consultants. The group felt that the global materials were too explicit for the conservative Senegalese society. 

El Hadj Diouf, who coordinates communication issues at FHI/Senegal, says, "We had no other choice than starting our own thing, using the message of the MTV material as an inspiration." The office decided to focus on the message, "Let youth speak out to curb HIV/AIDS infection." It also used the MTV logo and "Staying Alive" slogan (translated in French, "Rester en Vie"), which appeared on t-shirts, caps, and scarves. "We wanted to create a favorable environment so that the population, especially the youth, would adopt secure behaviors and attitudes towards AIDS," says Fatimata Sy, director of FHI/Senegal. To do this, the country campaign wanted to respect the Senegalese culture and have the consent and active participation of moral and religious authorities in the country.