Powerful Partnerships Mobilise To Break Child Abuse Cycle
YoungAfricaLive (YAL) is a mobile phenomenon with subscriber numbers now at the 1.3 million mark, solely by word-of-mouth. Now, Childline Gauteng is working closely with Vodacom and Praekelt Foundation, the powerful funding-and-technical partnership behind YAL, to connect with this audience.
Childline Gauteng’s goal is to change those behaviours in youth and young parents that contribute to the cycle of abuse. Providing information via a mobile platform is a further way of ensuring the organisation is relevant and prevalent in the lives of its constituents, by seeking and connecting with them where they hang out.
On YAL, Childline Gauteng is able to provide rich information around those issues that are important to kickstarting the conversation on abuse. This includes informative articles generated by specialist content writers at Traffik, as well as personal stories from YAL subscribers themselves. “When an article is published on YAL, it receives thousands of hits and numerous comments,” says Indrani. “Young people are reading and relating to others on the platform – and this encourages individuals to seek Childline’s well-known phone counselling services.”
These are manned by counsellors daily between 5pm to 5am and, as part of the partnership, a dedicated phone number for Childine Gauteng will be used to track the Gauteng-specific response to the project. However, as Indrani points out, the dedicated Gauteng phone number is not toll-free, and may be a barrier for many young people wanting to make direct contact.
The good news is that YAL mobi browsing is free to everyone, thanks to Vodacom’s zero-rating of the service. Praekelt Foundation plans to provide our TxtAlert offering to seven Childline counselling services in Gauteng. This will enable counsellors to maintain that all-important contact with those who have reached out to Childline, by sending automated yet personalised appointment reminders and messages via SMS.
Praekelt Foundation and info4africa today announced the integration of the vital info4africa HCT (HIV Counselling and Testing) database into the YoungAfricaLive (YAL) youth focused mobile social network.
The new feature, which will provide YoungAfricaLive, a free mobile social network available to Vodacom customers, with comprehensive information on HIV testing sites across South Africa, will go live on World Aids Day, Saturday 1 December 2012.
Praekelt Foundation launched YAL (YoungAfricaLive) in South Africa on 1 December 2009 to create an entertainment orientated, fun and interactive space where young South Africans can talk about hot topics that affect their daily lives including love, sex, relationships, gender and cultural issues, as well as HIV/AIDS. Since then the YAL mobile social network has grown to almost 1.3 million users making it SA's largest mobile social network around sexual and reproductive health.
The info4africa database (formerly HIVAN/HIV-911) which has now been integrated into YAL is the most complete database of HCT (HIV Counselling and Testing) sites in South Africa, making YAL users able to search for, and find their nearest HIV Counselling and Testing site anywhere in South Africa.
Regular HIV testing is recognised globally as a key HIV prevention mechanism and promoting regular testing is a key objective of YoungAfricaLive and the Vodacom Mobile Health Project (which funds YoungAfricaLive SA with the Praekelt Foundation).
The integration of the info4africa information will include HIV Clinic Location & Contacts when the new feature goes live on Saturday.
YoungAfricaLive users will find a link to the new feature on the homepage of YAL SA on Vodafone Live! Users will then be able to query the info4africa HIV data via a series of drop down menus to find a clinic in a certain province, city or suburb within South Africa. Once the clinic has been chosen, information provided includes the name of the clinic, a click-to-call phone number, address and the type of service available.
Gustav Praekelt, Praekelt Foundation Founder commented, “People often prefer to visit a clinic for testing and treatment in a different area to where they live to ensure anonymity because of stigma and discrimination. The data and functionality we’ve made available together with info4africa will provide many more people with access to the most comprehensive information and the freedom of choice at the same time. It’s another way in which the use of mobile technology for the most basic handset can help to change people’s lives”.
Debbie Heustice, Director of info4africa said “we are really excited about the partnership with YAL to bring the users of YAL more comprehensive information on HIV testing sites across South Africa. info4africa (formerly HIVAN/HIV-911) specialises in data collection and referrals to over 12 000 health, wellbeing and development support services across South Africa. We have a long history of working in the fields of health, wellbeing and development and believe that this partnership will further increase use of the referral network”
Young Africa Live (YAL) now has more than one million active users across three African countries.
This is a landmark achievement for the award-winning mobile youth platform that, since 2009, has created a space for young Africans to talk about the multitude of issues that affect them including sex, relationships and, importantly, HIV/AIDS.
Its one million plus users in South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania means YAL is a credible platform from which to significantly increase its scale into the rest of the continent and so reach an even larger population.
“YAL has found a place in the lives of young Africans, with its mix of frequently updated entertainment news, live interaction opportunities and permanent content and information about HIV and AIDS,” says Marcha Neethling.
“With one million users now part of the YAL community, we have a platform that not only plays a positive role in the lives of young people in Africa but can also give insight into the way they behave, their beliefs and much more.”
Praekelt Foundation, which created and runs YAL in conjunction with a range of partners in the three territories, has prioritised finding additional partners to take this highly-scalable mobile technology into many more African countries.
About Young Africa Live
Young Africa Live has been developed for young guys and girls by the Praekelt Foundation and is supported by the Vodacom Foundation in South Africa. Access to the mobile platform is free off a Vodacom Sim and works even when users have no airtime.
Young Africa Live’s focus is on hearing real stories about the conflicting (and often confusing) worlds of sex, love and relationships, straight from the mouths of youth.
Users interact on the Young Africa Live mobile platform where a cross-section of young contributors from all over South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya share their feelings and thoughts on relevant issues. Users can post comments and in so doing generate discussions.
Second Youth Sex Survey shows SA youth - between modernity and tradition
Cape Town, 31 May 2012 - South Africa’s youth are not afraid of having sex, as long as they are properly protected - but many still believe that a man “owns” a woman if he pays lobola* and a significant number did not get tested for HIV in the last year or are afraid of knowing their status. And while the majority of the wired generation is clued up enough not to have sex with someone they’ve met online, many young South Africans believe that abortion is wrong, no matter what the circumstances.
“This tension between being young and living fully in the digital age and coming from families and communities where culture and religions are still important is amply reflected in this year’s survey,” comments Praekelt Foundation founder, Gustav Praekelt.
A sequel to last year’s inaugural YAL Sex Survey released in May 2011, this year’s YAL Sex Survey covers the period May 2011 to May 2012 and includes a broader range of issues – among them sex, HIV, sexual health, sexuality, love, relationships and culture and heritage.
YoungAfricaLive has also grown significantly in the last year. It now numbers almost one million users who are regularly engaged with the platform.
The 2012 survey results were announced during the mHealth Summit currently taking place in Cape Town, at an event that also saw the award-winning Praekelt Foundation give insight into additional mobile technologies, including VumiGo, MAMA and Ummeli, that are changing lives in Africa. YoungAfricaLive (YAL) itself has also undergone significant growth over the past year: from launching on December 1st 2009 as a youth mobile community to entertain and educate young people on topics of love, sexual health, gender and relationships, YAL was launched in Tanzania late 2011 and in Kenya early this year.
Based around over 50 revealing questions and over 170 000 responses by YAL’s user community (up from the 138 954 responses in 2011), the YAL Youth Sex Survey takes the temperature of young Africans’ views on a range of issues, through the use of polls on YAL. This is not a scientific survey, but the volume and quality of responses from the YAL community gives real insight into the views and behaviour of young Africans – including on the all-important issue of Culture and Heritage. The second YAL Sex Survey, for instance, showed that 41% of respondents believe that the annual Reed Dance is important to preserve culture while 58% said it had no place in the modern world. On the other hand, an overwhelming 80% hold the view that Lobola* is not outdated and should be valued as “part of our heritage and culture”.
The YAL polls used for the YAL Sex Survey are frequently related to topical issues: for example, in April a poll was linked to a news story titled “Teen gang-raped – Perpetrators caught on video” that reported on the viral video showing a mentally disabled teenager being raped in Johannesburg. A total of 3 033 users voted, with the majority (46%) stating that the crime revealed a “real problem with the way some guys relate to women” while 22% believed the perpetrators were not raised properly and 27% said it showed how young people would do anything to record it on their cell phones and show it to their friends.
As part of YAL’s intention to track the views and behaviours of Africa’s youth over a period of time, a number of questions were repeated from the 2011 survey, with several more added to what will now become a consistent set of poll questions that will run each period (May to May) in South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya (as well as any other African territories that may be added).
Among these is a question about getting tested for HIV: in 2011, 31% of YAL users did NOT want to know their HIV-status. In 2012, that figure was up to 32% - even though actual user numbers for the poll increased. A new question – Are You Gay? (which will be repeated in the next cycle) - has revealed that 15% of YAL’s users are gay, with many having told their families.
The YAL Sex Survey potently gives voice to the contradictory beliefs that reflect the place in time of Africa’s youth who are visibly stuck between belief systems.
For instance, the respondents have clear insight into how little sex instruction they are getting from elders or society (sex education “just happened" said 44%) but also have strong religious principles with 53% agreeing with the statement that there is “never a good reason to have an abortion”. In addition, strong gender stereotypes remain in place – even though men are happy to reap the benefits of so-called gender equality. This cycle’s poll revealed that the majority of poll respondents (44%) believe that it does matter how many people a woman has slept with as this shows “she has no morals”. 89% of those taking this past cycle’s YAL polls believe that carrying a condom is the job of both men and women.
*Lobola is a Southern African tradition where a man pays his bride's family (historically with cattle but nowadays frequently in cash) for her hand in marriage, thereby creating a lasting bond between the two families.
Get the full results here [PDF]
About YoungAfricaLive
YoungAfricaLive is a mobile platform where a cross-section of young people from all over South Africa can share their feelings and thoughts on relevant issues around the conflicting (and often confusing) worlds of sex, love and relationships. The users post comments and in doing so generate discussions. YAL has been developed for young guys and girls by the Praekelt Foundation and is supported by the Vodacom Foundation. Access to the mobile platform is free for Vodacom users and works even when users have no airtime. YAL was launched in South Africa but has recently expanded into Tanzania and Kenya. The YAL platform currently has reached just under 1 million users in South Africa.
About Praekelt Foundation
Established in 2006, Praekelt Foundation is Africa’s leading developer of mobile solutions to improve people’s lives. From its Johannesburg-base, the social-business brings life-saving and life-changing information and services to people in Africa and in other developing markets. Praekelt Foundation believes that mobile phones provide the most potent way of effecting change for good within communities living in poverty.
Follow Praekelt Foundation on twitter @praekeltfound or visit www.praekeltfoundation.org
Award-winning YoungAfricaLive youth mobile community partners with Safaricom, now live in Kenya!
YoungAfricaLive (YAL) launches in Kenya today, adding substantially to the award-winning mobile community portal’s presence in East Africa which commenced when YAL Tanzania launched in December 2011.
In bringing the vibrant mobile community to Kenya, Praekelt Foundation has partnered with leading integrated communications firm, Safaricom. This partnership allows young Kenyans to share and discuss the issues they confront daily, via their mobile phone.
Says Safaricom’s Director of Corporate Affairs, Nzioka Waita, “This partnership is key to our digital inclusion agenda. We believe that the best way to improve the utility and therefore take-up of the internet among the youth of Africa and Kenya in particular, is by having relevant content on it and making it accessible to them. Being in the vanguard of the internet explosion in Kenya, we have the network to deliver YAL’s socially relevant and well-packaged message to as many young Kenyans as possible.”
Safaricom has invested heavily in bringing internet access to the Kenyan people. According to government data, nine out of every 10 Kenyans who access the internet regularly do so through the Safaricom network.
“To follow-up a very successful launch in Tanzania late last year with YAL Kenya is a great way to start 2012,” says Gustav Praekelt, founder of Praekelt Foundation. “We are confident that young Kenyans will embrace the mobile platform with the same passion that their South African and Tanzanian counterparts have and use it to create a community that informs, supports and entertains.”
Launched by Praekelt Foundation in 2009 in South Africa, YAL started out as a way of providing young South Africans with free access to information on HIV/AIDS through their mobile device. It has now turned into a community of engaged young people who use YoungAfricaLive to gain reliable information, discuss issues, have fun and gain the support and input of their peers
YAL South Africa, in partnership with Vodacom, already has an approximate 1 million unique users while YAL Tanzania (also in partnership with Vodacom) has already established a strong presence in the country with a steadily growing user base, since 1st December, 2011.
In 2011, Praekelt Foundation was acknowledged for the success of YoungAfricaLive by winning the Social Impact category of the 2011 Global Mobile Marketing Awards for Innovation, Creativity and Leadership in Los Angeles in November.
YoungAfricaLive is available to Safaricom subscribers in Kenya from January 23rd.
For more, visit praekeltfoundation.org or follow us on Twitter at @praekeltfound
Award-winning YoungAfricaLive youth mobile Community launches in Tanzania
YoungAfricaLive launches on Vodacom Tanzania today, marking the start of the award-winning mobile community’s presence in East Africa.
Young Africa Live is a mobile community that entertains and educates young people on topics of love, sexual health, gender and relationships which are issues adversely affecting the youth in Tanzania.
The platform will therefore empower youth to become catalysts for change, connecting them to Tanzania health care providers and create a new experience of what can be achieved by mobile internet as a platform.
Fittingly, YoungAfricaLive: Tanzania arrives on World Aids Day – two years to the day after YoungAfricaLive’s inception in South Africa where it has proved to be an potent way for young people to share and discuss the issues they confront daily.
YoungAfricaLive: Tanzania is available free to Vodacom subscribers through the Vodacom Mobile portal http://m.vodacom.co.tz. This means that users are able to be on the YoungAfricaLive portal even if they don’t have airtime – a critical element in a country where one of the key millennium development goals is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
“We are thrilled that our partners Vodacom have joined us in launching YoungAfricaLive in Tanzania,” says Gustav Praekelt, founder of Praekelt Foundation.
“Over the past two years, what started out as a desire to provide young South Africans with free access to information on HIV/AIDS through their mobile device has turned into a vibrant community of engaged young people who use YoungAfricaLive to gain information, discuss issues - and also have fun.”
Just recently Praekelt Foundation was acknowledged for the success of YoungAfricaLive in South Africa, which currently has over 656,000 users. The Johannesburg based organization, Africa’s leading developer of mobile solutions to improve people’s lives, was named the first South African winner of the Social Impact category of the Mobile Marketing Awards for Innovation, Creativity and Leadership in Los Angeles in November 2011.
Over two years YoungAfricaLive has grown to become South Africa’s largest mobile community for young people – and with a substantial number of youth in Vodacom Tanzania’s over 10.5-million subscriber base, the uptake of YoungAfricaLive in this country is expected to be as significant.
YoungAfricaLive’s real power comes in providing a space where young Africans can talk about sex, HIV/AIDS, love, relationships, and, increasingly, jobs.
“The fact is that through YoungAfricaLive and Vodacom, Tanzania’s youth can now get onto a mobile platform at no cost and get information on some very topical and important issues,” says Rene Meza, Managing Director Vodacom Tanzania
“Most importantly, YoungAfricaLive gives users the opportunity to ‘talk’ to other young Tanzanians about the things that affect their lives the most – be it their lovelife or female genital mutilation.” Said Rene
As we’ve seen in South Africa, this peer-to-peer conversation is incredibly powerful in changing people’s lives for the better and we are excited about giving young people in Tanzania access to this.
YoungAfricaLive is available free to pre-paid Vodacom subscribers from December 1st.
Today we Remember: World Aids Day Wall of Tributes on YoungAfricaLive
Last year on 1 December, World Aids Day, YoungAfricaLive became a space for users to pay tribute to and remember those lost to Aids. It all began with a blog story called ‘Today I remember the people I lost’ and evolved into a very moving series of posts from users naming and remembering those they had lost to Aids.
There is nothing in South Africa like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington DC, a huge slab of black granite that cuts through the neatly manicured lawns with name after name of those lost in the war, listed on it. And yet, millions of South Africans have lost their lives to the disease.
Let’s be the first to acknowledge the impact this pandemic has had on our society. As the numbers of Tributes rise in the course of the day tomorrow, we have an opportunity to create a landmark experience for South African survivors of this pandemic - the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and friends of those lost to - or living with - HIV and Aids.
