Sexto Sentido — Puntos de Encuentro's Youth TV Drama and Community-Mobilisation Strategy Against Violence, Nicaragua

Sexto Sentido is a youth-oriented telenovela produced by the Nicaraguan feminist NGO Puntos de Encuentro, explicitly storylining intimate partner violence, rape and child sexual abuse alongside gender-equitable relationship models. The mass-media 'edutainment' series was reinforced by grassroots youth-leader training, a national network of youth communicators, and local-level community mobilisation activities — combining a national broadcast reach with locally organised follow-up discussion and referral.
A three-wave longitudinal panel survey of 4,500 young people aged 13–24, conducted in October 2003, 2004 and 2005, tracked the same cohort over time. Sexto Sentido was the most-watched show among the group, reaching 70% of young women surveyed; 18% of respondents spontaneously recalled the campaign's rights slogan ('I have a right to live without violence'). The panel found improvements in restrictive-gender-norm attitudes, increased awareness of Nicaragua's violence-against-women legislation, and an increase in self-reported use of services by survivors of violence.
Because the evaluation is a longitudinal observational panel rather than a randomised trial, causal attribution is weaker than for the RCTs run elsewhere in this coverage gap; the honest reading is that the programme achieved substantial reach and measurable shifts in awareness and self-reported helpseeking, documented across three annual waves, without the counterfactual control group a trial would provide. Puntos de Encuentro sustained and extended the strategy with a second series (Contracorriente) and continued youth-network mobilisation well beyond the original broadcast run.

Read the full analysis: https://www.alliancemagazine.org/feature/the-moriah-fund-puntos-de-encuentros-sexto-sentido/