loveLife challenges youth to define their future

“It is time to push HIV communication to a new level,” says loveLife media director Mandla Ndlovu. “Young people know how to avoid getting HIV, but still not enough are adopting less risky behaviours.

“We now need to help shape a new identity that matches their incredible optimism with the realism that opportunity won’t just happen. Every person, whether HIV negative or positive, needs to take a conscious decision that they don’t want HIV; neither do they want anybody else to get HIV. We all must take control of our lives and our relationships. This resolve must become part of who we are.”

Face-to-face interaction

loveLife’s billboard campaign will be supported by monthly print publications, weekly hour-long programmes on 12 radio stations and public service announcements on radio and television. Over 1200 groundbreakers and 5000 mpintshis (buddies) are working in 4000 schools, 160 community-based organisations and 500 clinics - sustaining face-to-face interaction with close to half a million young people a month.

The campaign seeks to capitalise on its motivational brand that has become synonymous with healthy lifestyle and safer sexual behaviour among young people. The campaign builds on earlier campaigns aimed at enabling young people to understand and deal with pressures and social expectations that drive high risk sexual behaviour. It makes a deliberate jump from provoking thought and providing information to defining a new identity, calling on young people to be part of a love life generation.

“We have to find a new way of mobilising youth to not only dream of a healthy, successful life, but to act on their ambitions,” Ndlovu adds. “Today’s teenagers are looking to define a new identity for themselves and to locate themselves in the context of modern South Africa and a global environment.”

Heeding the message

What’s most important now is not what you know, says Ndlovu, but who you think you are and who you think you can be. There is evidence from national surveys that most learners – even those who are sexually active – have heeded at least some of the message and protect themselves from HIV and pregnancy.

The biggest challenge is among school-leavers, where HIV rates increase sharply. Despite relatively good knowledge, many school-leavers face a set of circumstances that puts them at new risk as they change from being a learner to a prospective breadwinner and parent. In the face of limited opportunities and the need for physical and material security, many school-leavers accept their lot and live for today.

“For many women”, says Ndlovu, “the need for day-to-day security often comes at the expense of long-term protection from HIV. The power to decide must become part of who they are.”

Click here for the loveLife billboard rationale.