What If … October 14th, 2005
A young generation of Arabic writers starts to emerge.
A teenage brother and sister growing up in a Christian home in North Africa is a rare thing. A North African Christian teenage brother and sister writing radio scripts aimed towards youth – that might be a first! This story is not only strange, but has God’s fingerprints all over it.
The radio programming we create and produce is geared toward general audiences. We have no programs specifically for youth or children. This is unfortunate as youth are a huge segment of the population across North Africa. In the United States the median age is 36 years of age, but it’s 23 years in Morocco, 24 in Algeria, 27 in Tunisia.
We’ve felt this need for a long time. Last year it surfaced in the annual NAP meetings where several ministries and the North African Church come together to discuss current trends and needs of the region. Reaching youth has become an emphasis in these circles, including at MMC.
The brother and sister pair, Aziz & Latifa, did not sprout an interest in radio and seek a chance to start writing scripts overnight. It all began when they came to help their mom cook for a group of Christians. This particular gathering, one of the seminars MMC helps facilitate alongside the North African Church, was the Drama seminar. It covered the history of radio ministry into North Africa and the basics of production, and gave assignments in script writing to those who attended.
Aziz & Latifa asked if they could sit in and join the eleven other students. When the class got underway, the teachers were thrilled with this group, and all the students liked the material. “No one took breaks, they were just working hard,” our Arabic staff member said after talking with the teachers.
The results from the class were so exciting no one wanted to wait until next summer to keep going with their writing projects. Our Arabic staff set up a two committees to oversee the project throughout the year. One will meet on a local level with national church leaders who were part of the seminar. The other, an executive committee, includes those in the local group and a few of our own Arabic staff members. Both groups will review the work of these students as their skills and ideas develop. These scripts will most likely be the catalyst for new content for our programs.
As teenagers, Aziz & Latifa showed an amazing understanding for the material and the principles behind radio. What if younger believers like Aziz & Latifa were writing culturally relevant messages to share Jesus’ message with their peers? What impact would that have in a region where there are so many young people?
We are dreaming and watching God move the pieces into place!