The New loveLife Trust (loveLife) was formed in 1999 as a private public partnership between the South African Government, private sector and various non-government organisations. Over the years, the vision of the organisation has moved from HIV awareness, education and inspiration for healthy living to being a leader in Youth Health promotion. Health is defined as a “state of complete physical, mental and social well-being“ (www.who.int/about/mission/en).The loveLife program offering consists of various programs under three main pillars namely:
- Healthy lifestyle
- Sports and Active lifestyles
- Youth Leadership Development
loveLife seeks to promote social activism for healthy living, active lifestyle and HIV consciousness among young people, through information, education and awareness campaigns, behavioural change programmes, and youth development initiatives.
loveLife has presence in all nine provinces of South Africa and reaches on average 1.2 million young people between the ages of 10-24 each year.
The Boy Child Programme (TBCP)
The aim of Boy Child Programme is to assist boys to make positive life choices when it comes to their health, their future and the way they respond to situations that life throws at them.
The Programme has 3 main focus areas:
- Health Promotion
- Violence Prevention including Gender Based Violence (GBV)
- Youth Leadership Development
loveLife understands the importance of having boys and young men as an important stakeholder when discussing issues of health, violence ,wellbeing and those affecting young women and girls. It is a known biological fact that young girls do not impregnate or inflicting GBV on themselves.To address these issues, everyone who is part of the challenge needs to participate in its alleviation.
The programme aims to challenge:
- certain gender norms and behaviours that perpetuate and even intensify violent behaviours towards women and girls by boys and men.
- violence by men and boys towards their male counterparts.
