loveLife – building complete young leaders for an HIV free future

loveLife is South Africa’s HIV-prevention programme for young people. Since its inception by leading private funders and the South African government in 1999, loveLife has harnessed youth leadership to promote healthy lifestyles among South African teenagers.

loveLife comprehensively addresses the complex behavioural, social and structural drivers of risk tolerance among young people through combining a nationwide multimedia campaign with systems strengthening, community-level outreach and clinical and psychosocial services. loveLife programmes are led by 18 to 25 year-old groundBREAKERS and mpintshis who work in more than 8 000 schools nationwide from almost 900 bases in loveLife Y-Centres, youth-friendly clinics, social franchises and other loveLife outlets.

By the late 1990s, the rate of new HIV infections in South Africa was rampant, particularly among youth. In the period between 1997 and 1999, growing concern among some civil society organisations resulted in the urgent need to develop an HIV prevention programme targeted at young South Africans.

Subsequently, loveLife was launched in September 1999 as a joint initiative between leading South African non-governmental organisations and the South African government in partnership with several private foundations and with substantial South African private sector support.

loveLife is the most innovative and comprehensive initiative ever established in South Africa to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In its over 12 year existence, loveLife has promoted healthy, HIV-free living among South African teenagers, combining a sustained multimedia campaign with a network of community-level outreach and support programmes implemented across South Africa.

loveLife’s comprehensive package of lifeskills, sexual health, sports as well as arts and culture programmes are facilitated by a cohort of peer motivators and community mobilisers known as groundBREAKERS (gBs) and mpintshis.

Today, there are around 1 200 gBs who work together with 8 000 mpintshis in facilitating loveLife programmes in 532 government clinics, over 9 000 schools, 330 community-based organisations and 18 loveLife Y-Centres (youth centres). An average of 1.5 million young people are enrolled in the school-based programmes, while more than 1.7 million youth participate in various events at our sites during the year.

In addition to this, the organisation reaches many thousands of young people through youth festivals as well as its loveLife Games Programme. Through this far-reaching initiative, gBs and mpintshis provide youth at sporting events with loveLife publications and also implement loveLife’s empowering programmes.
As well as providing healthy sexuality, positive lifestyle, sports as well as dance and drama programmes which extend their reach across South Africa, in 2007 loveLife established the gogoGetter Programme which involves over 500 grandmothers to support between 5 000 and 7 000 orphaned and vulnerable teenagers and their younger siblings.

In their work as champions of children, the grandmothers (goGogetters) have to fulfil various objectives which include ensuring children in their care don’t go hungry and have access to medical care and grants they’re entitled to. Working as vital support structures in communities, these elderly women also make sure children stay in school, are protected from all forms of abuse and have a healthy sense of belonging, identity and purpose.

loveLife programmes extend to the Born Free Dialogues, which provide a platform for young people and their parents to talk openly and honestly about sex and various topical issues fuelling HIV infections. Happening in communities across South Africa, these dialogues aim to entrench positive social norms by encouraging communities to take action in addressing the challenges putting them at risk of HIV.

The dialogues are also geared at encouraging parents to talk to their kids about sex. loveLife is promoting open discussion about sex and life issues between parents and their teenagers. If young people are armed with support and factual sex and sexuality knowledge from their parents, they are less likely to be swayed by peer pressure and wrong information from friends which could heighten their risk of infection.

As part of assisting parents to have discussions with their kids about sex, loveLife runs a Parent Line on 0800 121 100 where parents can receive guidance and information on talking to their children about sex.

Also available is a toll-free helpline on 0800 121 900 and a Please Call Me Service on 083 323 1023, which offer young people information and telephonic counselling free of charge.

Youth are regularly informed of loveLife messaging and programmes through a range of media platforms including UNCUT, South Africa’s largest circulation youth magazine as well as on the web, mobile and radio.

loveLife programmes don’t just provide young people with information about HIV. They also address the individual, social and structural factors that make young people more tolerant of engaging in risky behaviour despite them having reasonable levels of knowledge about HIV/AIDS. The primary factors driving the HIV epidemic are as much entrenched in the norms and structures of South African society as in the rationality of individual decision making.

Included in the individual factors driving high risk behaviour among youth are low self-esteem and feeling hopeless about the future. It is among young women who have just left school that loveLife sees the greatest spike in HIV infection. On leaving school, many enter into a world of greater day to day pressures and few future prospects, which leads to a greater sense of hopelessness about the future. If young people are pessimistic about what lies ahead of them, if they believe they have little chance of pursuing tertiary education or finding a job, they are more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behaviour as they believe they have little to look forward to in life. There is strong theoretical support for the notion that a key cognitive factor in causing young people to be more tolerant of risk is the perception that they can’t access opportunities.

Through its Make Your Move programme, loveLife informs youth about how to access study and work opportunities, while its lovingLife programme builds their sense of identity, purpose and belonging, boosting their confidence and determination to go out and seize opportunities. In addition to this, loveLife’s Nakanjani campaign, launched last year, encourages young people to take charge of their destinies no matter their circumstances.

By encouraging youth to access opportunities, loveLife is working to link youth to the mainstream economy, so addressing the structural drivers of HIV which include low education, inequality and poverty. Young people living in disadvantaged circumstances are at increased risk of HIV infection as they are more likely to drop out of school and stay in abusive relationships, where they are less empowered to demand condom use.

Abusive relationships are part of the social drivers of HIV, which also include coercion, peer pressure and male entitlement. loveLife’s healthy sexuality programme, called Body Ys, offers a range of information, from how to be assertive and negotiate condom use to the differences between a good and bad relationship.

Through its far-reaching interventions, loveLife is building a generation of young leaders driving a movement of young people committed to HIV free futures.

In 2012, major funding for loveLife is provided by the National Department of Health, the National Department of Social Development, and Sports and Recreation South Africa. loveLife also receives generous support from the Anglo American Chairman’s Fund, Berco, the D.G. Murray Trust, Dewey & Le Boeuf, FIFA Football for Hope, Gauteng Department of Social Development, Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Independent Newspapers, Mpumalanga Department of Social Development, the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, North West Department of Social Development, Royal Bafokeng Nation, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, Ster Kinekor, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Volkswagen South Africa.

For more about loveLife, refer to www.lovelife.org.za.