Visit of Federal German Development Minster Dirk Niebel at loveLife

From 8 to 10 April the Minister of Economic cooperation and development Dirk Niebel visited South Africa together with 20 other delegates. One of the highlights of his travel was the visit at loveLife, South Africa’s biggest Organisation for HIV&AIDS prevention amongst youth. Over the last 10 years of its existence loveLife has been linking HIV prevention with youth development approaches. loveLife presented their focus areas and successes of their work as well as demonstrated its organisation through music, dance and poems. Also Drama for Life – a programme of the Witwatersrand University that enables artists to use drama in the fight against HIV&AIDS – presented their work.

loveLife is a highly innovative prevention approach in the fight against HIV&AIDS. First results show that more than half of the groundBREAKERs (loveLife’s peer educators) have found possibilities for further education or job opportunities. Further that loveLife made a significant contribution to the reduction of the new HIV infections in its target group. With this not enough: loveLife’s aim is to contribute to half the national prevalence rate by 2015. The German Development Service (DED) supports loveLife currently with three technical experts and through a Public-Private-Partnership Programme for the further development of HIV prevention approaches for Youth. Through the support loveLife has been strengthened as an institution.

By Maren Lieberum (DED)