The leaders of Pokosi were butting heads. They'd been wined and dined by Marco Franklin, a rich developer who wanted to build a sleek, new resort on their Micronesian island. But there was one problem: In order to build, they'd have to destroy mangroves.

“We cannot afford to destroy that part of Pokosi where Franklin wants his resort,” said one leader. “The mangrove is too important for…”

"For what?" asked the island's mayor, Mr. Martin. "For a few fish and some crabs?"

Some 200,000 Micronesians rushed home to find out whether the resort got built on episode 73 of Changing Tides, a soap opera produced by Alleyne Regis to educate islanders about thorny issues like contraception, AIDS, and the South Pacific’s imperiled ecosystems. While Mayor Martin might be fictional, the effects of the soap, which ran from 2004 to 2007, were anything but: Between 80 and 90 percent of listeners said they learned something about health; 32 percent stopped littering; and 19 percent quit eating sea turtle eggs.

Regis, the mastermind behind Changing Tides, knows a thing or two about the power of stories; he’s produced educational soaps all over the world. Regis, 42, stumbled into radio by accident. “Not in my lifetime did I ever think I’d be doing this thing,” he says, laughing. In the early nineties, he worked as an educator with the forest service in his native St. Lucia, raising awareness about the then-endangered St. Lucian parrot. But parrots weren’t first on most islanders’ minds: St. Lucia’s population was exploding, and poverty was widespread.

So he began working with RARE, a conservation group that aims to protect ecosystems and surrounding communities, to figure out how to engage locals. Regis and his RARE colleague Paul Butler knew that St. Lucians loved their daytime television—The Bold and the Beautiful was especially popular. They decided to launch their own radio soap, Apwe Plezi (Creole for “after the pleasure”).

But changing attitudes, Regis found, required more than do-gooding protagonists and nefarious villains. To test whether Apwe Plezi's messages were hitting home, characters referred to condoms as “catapults.” Results were encouraging: When asked to define “catapult”, 57 percent of listeners said it was a kind of condom. Ultimately, Butler and Regis started their own line of Catapult condoms. “Alleyne had to order 40,000 condoms,” recalls Butler. Condoms may seem unrelated to conservation, but Regis believes social and environmental problems are always connected. “If you're worried about your poor uncle or sister with HIV, how are you going to care about not dumping things into the sea?” says Regis.

Regis left RARE last year to work with the nonprofit Population Media Center on a new soap set to air in nine eastern Caribbean countries next year. He’ll be tackling tough environmental issues: deforestation in the area is on the rise, and the coral reef is suffering due to overfishing and chemical dumping. But Regis is ready to start tugging heartstrings. “Emotion is important,” he says. “It is the key to changing attitudes.”

Posted on Mar 5, 2008 at 7:53 AM
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