loveLife Trust, South Africa’s national youth leadership development organisation, is saddened by violent attacks on foreign nationals living in South Africa. loveLife condemns the violent attacks on foreign nationals that have erupted in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere in South Africa. As an adolescent and youth focused organisation, loveLife is calling on all South Africans, especially young South Africans to take action to put an end to these senseless killings of foreigners living within our borders. loveLife is also calling for calm and tolerance in communities within the province of KwaZulu-Natal.
 
In standing firm against xenophobia, loveLife will work to address attitudes, perceptions and behaviours that fuel violence and prejudice towards foreign nationals living in South Africa. Throughout the country, loveLife will activate its groundBREAKERs (peer motivators and community mobilisers who implement loveLife programmes) and mpintshis (volunteers who work in partnership with groundBREAKERs) to lead the organisation’s Born Free and Community Dialogues in KwaZulu-Natal and other provinces to discuss issues relating to xenophobia, human rights, access to services, harmony, tolerance and youth development.
 
Nditsheni Mungoni, loveLife’s Senior Executive Manager: Programmes and Brand, says: “We take this crisis seriously and will put every effort into ensuring loveLife’s various interventions to reduce xenophobia reach communities across South Africa. We have a massive footprint throughout the country and so can play an influential role through loveLife’s groundBREAKER and mpintshi programme in getting young people to address violence and development issues in their communities.”
 
The organisation’s Community Dialogues is a platform where young people and various stakeholders in communities talk openly about a variety of social challenges, while also finding ways to tackle them head on. At the Born Free Dialogues, intergenerational conversations take place between young people and parents, where they discuss issues affecting youth and their development and then work to find sustainable resolutions to addressing them.
 
loveLife groundBREAKERs and mpintshis will be at the forefront of discussions on xenophobia at these dialogues, which will give participants the opportunity to express their views on the issue, while also coming up with lasting solutions to tackling the violence and putting forward alternative solutions to addressing their issues. Indeed, the Born Free and Community Dialogues will assist in building unity, social cohesion and integration among people of different nations within communities.
 
Other initiatives loveLife will run to curb xenophobia include producing talk shows with debate and conversation on xenophobia-related topics, including nationalism, the scramble for scarce resources and controlling immigration. Aired on African language and community stations across South Africa, these shows will play a powerful role in challenging attitudes and practices that fuel xenophobia.
 
We will also activate our provincial and regional offices countrywide and work with municipalities throughout the nation to strengthen programmes that demand an end to the current wave of xenophobic violence.
 
As loveLife, we want to partner with organisations working to address xenophobia. We support them in their drive to continue working with migrant organisations in all their activities and engaging their members to bring about peace.
 
Support from the USAID-funded Building Local Capacity for Delivery of HIV Services in Southern Africa Project (BLC) is enabling loveLife to implement a migrant youth programme in Limpopo to work under the Migration Corridor project. Through the programme, migrant youth in Limpopo are benefiting from loveLife’s comprehensive healthy sexuality, positive lifestyle and arts and culture programmes, which are implemented in schools, clinics and community-based organisations.
 
With its target audience of 12 to 25 year olds, loveLife is in a prime position to mould the mindsets of youth to address challenges fuelling xenophobia, while also encouraging them to be active citizens in eradicating anti-foreign attacks, perceptions and beliefs. loveLife is building a better future driven by the energy and idealism of young people.
 
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About loveLife
 
loveLife, South Africa’s national youth leadership programme, promotes a vibrant, youth leadership culture through on-the-ground healthy sexuality and positive lifestyle programmes aimed at building complete young leaders.
 
loveLife addresses the individual, societal and structural drivers of high-risk behaviour through combining multimedia campaigns, community-level outreach, clinical and psychosocial services.
 
Our positive lifestyle and healthy sexuality programmes are implemented by a national youth volunteer corps known as groundBREAKERs (peer motivators and community mobilisers between the ages of 18 and 25 years old) and mpintshis (loveLife volunteers). Working together, they implement loveLife’s empowering positive lifestyle and healthy sexuality programmes in 8000 schools and 900 bases in loveLife Y-Centres (youth centres), adolescent and youth friendly clinics as well as social franchises (community-based organisations). The groundBREAKERs guide and mentor mpintshis in the implementation of loveLife programmes.
 
In 2015, major funding for loveLife is from the Department of Health, the Department of Social Development and Sport and Recreation South Africa. Additional support is provided by Gauteng Department of Health, Mpumalanga Department of Social Development, North West Department of Social Development, Football for Hope, German Development Bank (KFW), Kolomela, Management Sciences for Health (MSH), Newsclip, the Southern Africa Trust, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Volkswagen South Africa (VWSA).
 
For more information contact:
 
Thandiwe McCloy
Tel: 011 523 1000
Mobile: 083 696 6597
Email: thandiwe@lovelife.org.za
 
For more about loveLife, refer to www.lovelife.org.za.