Staff from Globo Television visited UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on their way to Cannes, France, for the 2018 Emmy Kids Awards. Globo and UNAIDS were nominated for an Emmy Kids Award in the digital category for the web series Young Hearts—I Just Want to Love, which focuses on a high school romance between a teenager living with HIV and his girlfriend.
The series was a spin-off from Brazil’s longest running soap opera, Malhação—Seu Lugar No Mundo (Young Hearts—Your Place in the World), a production developed and broadcast by Globo. One of the episodes focused on the teenage love story, which became a hit with the audience. The soap averages a daily audience of 24 million viewers, mainly pre-adolescents and their parents. UNAIDS, an official partner with Globo since 2015, gave technical advice and support to the writers of the show.
UNAIDS, Globo and Gshow produced the web spin-off, which is available on the Globo streaming platform. The five-episode web series became the third most watched original series on the platform, with almost 1 million views.
Michel Sidibé, UNAIDS Executive Director, congratulated Globo, explaining how media plays a key role in stopping HIV stigma and exclusion. He praised the Globo partnership for using edutainment to reach young people with compelling and relevant HIV information.
Emmanuel Jacobina, the writer of Young Hearts—Your Place in the World for the 2015–2016 season and the web series, said that the idea came from a conversation he had with the UNAIDS team about HIV in Brazil. It disturbed him, he said, that despite there being methods for prevention, tens of thousands of people still become infected with HIV each year in Brazil. As a result, the web series, he said, seemed the best place to push the debate further and speak bluntly about relationships, sexuality and HIV.
The Director of Corporate and Social Responsibility at Globo, Beatriz Azeredo, reiterated the company’s commitment to mobilize Brazilian society around major social issues with television series and public service announcements. Globo’s Director of Communications, Sergio Valente, noted Globo’s presence in more than 100 countries and said that it has a 99% reach in Brazilian homes.
Of the three nominees in the digital category, the award went to the Norwegian series Jenter (Young Girls), produced by NRK.
UNAIDS is working towards ensuring that 90% of young people have the skills, knowledge and capacity to protect themselves from HIV and have access to sexual and reproductive health services by 2020.