In a small animal village in Latin America, a curious character named Harry once helped children explore joy, fear, empathy, and friendship. What began as a playful edutainment experiment, On Air with Harry, part of the La Aldea universe, has since evolved into a multi-country learning through play platform reaching children and caregivers across East Africa and beyond. 

This is not just a story of cartoons and radio shows. It is a story of how socio-emotional learning (SEL) can travel across cultures, adapt to crisis and normal contexts, and ultimately become locally owned, scalable, and sustainable educational tool that support children’s social and emotional well-being. The premise was simple, but powerful - children learn best through relatable stories, and stories are more memorable when they are playful.  

On Air with Harry was originally designed as an engaging narrative universe where animal characters model emotions, relationships, and coping strategies. Grounded in global SEL frameworks, the program translated abstract concepts like empathy, resilience, and emotional regulation into stories that children could feel, recognize, and practice. 

Enter Mama Viazi

The La Aldea animal universe gave way to Dunga, a locally grounded narrative world centered around Mama Viazi, a caregiver character who reflects everyday realities in refugee and host communities in Uganda and Tanzania. Local writers, educators, and community members co-created the stories, ensuring that emotional lessons were embedded in culturally familiar contexts like family dynamics, school experiences, and community life.  

 Edutainment as a delivery system for learning 

Once in the field, Mama Viazi’s stories traveled through multiple channels: radio broadcasts, community listening groups, classroom activities, caregiver toolkits, and digital platforms. Teachers integrated episodes into learning activities; caregivers discussed themes with children at home; facilitators guided reflection sessions. The program embedded feedback loops. Episode formats were adjusted, languages expanded, caregiver content refined, and dissemination strategies adapted based on real-world use. 

Children practiced naming emotions, resolving conflicts, and expressing feelings. Caregivers reported increased confidence in playful parenting. During the COVID-19 school closures, Dunga became a tool for home-based learning, enabling children and caregivers to continue engaging with learning through play content through radio, flash disks, preloaded devices, WhatsApp channels, and community listening groups.   

In Ethiopia, Mama Viazi’s name evolved into locally meaningful versions such as Mama Mango, Mama Temro, and episodes adapted and translated into 11 languages to reflect diverse cultural contexts. Most recently, Mama Viazi became Mama Arangi//Orange in DAERO, currently serving children in the Tigray Region.  

What this means for scale, replication and children's learning 

When the program transitioned into East Africa under Play Well, and later PlayMatters and REAL projects, the question was not whether it would work, but how it should transform. Each adaptation followed a structured contextualization process to ensure cultural relevance within the original SEL domain. The process became increasingly efficient and cost-effective while maintaining quality. DAERO further proved that the model is not static but continues to improve through practice, offering a scalable, culturally grounded. 

A locally led approach is adaptable and effective in low-resource and crisis-affected settings, and most importantly, feasible. This continuous learning and development approach created an edutainment experience for children, while serving as a pedagogical tool.  The journey from On Air with Harry to Dunga to DAERO demonstrates that playful edutainment can function as a resilient learning tool.  Because the model was built on adaptable narrative universes, modular SEL frameworks, and local co-creation. it is inherently replicable across all educational contexts and education systems.  

Access the full edutainment series in all languages and contexts in our Learning through Play Library here