loveLife Campaign

By using advertising strategies similar to those used to market popular brands to young people, loveLife seeks to promote specific behavioural values, including informed choice and responsible sexuality, and works to link young people to counseling and clinical services. loveLife's strategy is three-pronged:

1. Build awareness by stimulating more open and better-informed communication about sex, sexuality, and gender relations.
2. Develop necessary public health services, institutional support, and outreach programmes for young people.
3. Conduct ongoing monitoring and research.

Some of loveLife¹s major programmes include:

• A marketing campaign to establish the brand of loveLife through billboards throughout South Africa.
• Several television programmes, including S'camto groundBREAKERS, a weekly show that features young South Africans talking candidly about youth issues; LoveLife Games, a weekly half-hour show that documents LoveLife's sports competition; and parent focused public service announcements that encourage open communication.
• Radio programmes that are produced and presented by youth and are broadcast in all 11 official languages on various community and national stations.
• LoveLife produces several types of print materials that are distributed via partnerships with newspapers. These include UNCUT, a lifestyle magazine, Lovefacts, a youth-oriented sexual health booklet, Talking and Listening to your Teenager, a booklet designed for parents, as well as articles on various topics.
• A national network of Y-Centres provide educational, recreational, and sexual health services in resource-poor communities. The Y-Centres offer friendly clinics and counselling for teens on healthy and positive lifestyles, as well as sports and computer facilities, contraceptives, and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.
• The LoveTrain visits rural towns and villages along South Africa's rail line and offers sexual health advice and information on legal rights and choices. The train's schedule can be viewed on LoveLife's website. Mobile broadcast units also conduct outreach and education activities.
• A nationwide annual school sports programme called the loveLife Games reaches about 4 million students, and according to organisers, is South Africa’s biggest inter-school sports and lifestyle development initiative.
• Thethajunction is a toll-free national youth sexual health helpline that receives more than 30,000 calls per month. The organisation also supports a helpline for parents seeking guidance in communicating with their children.

In March 2008, loveLife launched a new phase of its campaign designed to go beyond the promotion of healthy sexuality to trying to change young people's sense of day-to-day opportunity. Using the tagline "Make YOUR Move", the new approach recognises that most young South Africans know about HIV/AIDS and how to avoid getting it, but further progress in reducing the prevalence among young people is constrained by their perception of limited opportunity. "Make YOUR Move" is designed to mobilise young South Africans to take control of their future, by identifying and seizing opportunities - no matter how small.

The campaign also offers information on the internet. The loveLife youth website is designed to provide information and encourage discussion among young people, while the loveLife parents website offers information and resources for parents.

HIV/AIDS, Children, Youth, Health, Family Planning.

The TV show S'camto won an Avanti in 2001 for best youth television series, and at Sithengi 2002 was voted best youth and children edutainment programme for 2002.

More than five million South Africans (12 percent of the population) are HIV-positive. Conservative estimates are that in excess of 10 million South Africans could be infected with HIV in the next five to 10 years. At the current rate of infection, half of all South Africans 15 years or younger could die of HIV/AIDS. One in three women in South Africa has given birth by the time she is 18; STIs are endemic among young people in large parts of South Africa; violence and coercion are common features of adolescent sexual behaviour.

Despite these facts, there is hope that the progress of the HIV epidemic can be curtailed. Approximately 40 percent of the South African population is under 15 years of age, the age group that is both most at risk of HIV and also most likely to change their behaviours. However, existing HIV education programmes appear to have had limited impact on sexual behaviour. Surveys show that about 98 percent of South Africans are aware of HIV/AIDS and how it is spread, but condom use among South African males has remained almost unchanged at about 10 percent over the past five years. Research shows that to be effective, prevention efforts must target the highest risk groups; education must deal with the broader context of sexual behaviour; condom use must become a normal part of youth culture; and education and prevention must be sustained over many years at a sufficient level of intensity to hold public attention.

In the first year, the loveLife media campaign concentrated on building brand awareness through an initial teaser campaign [billboards] designed to create intrigue; this campaign then focussed more pointedly on sex and HIV. According to the organisers, by the end of the first year, more than two thirds of South Africans could appropriately identify the loveLife brand.