Youth Leadership Development
loveLife defines health as the complete well-being of a person. Developing disease-free, mental health and community youth leadership is a cornerstone of our youth work. The loveLife 3C framework plays on the foundation of YLD loveLife, where we want to see young people whole, creative and connected.
We know that encouraging young people to abandon harmful behaviors that affect their physical health, without providing them with access to psychological support, training and opportunities, only goes half way to ensuring young people’s health and success in life.
The program is implemented by loveLife groundBREAKERs across the country. The program results in increased long-term fitness and activity, better healthy and sexual choices among young people, and increased diversity and respect.
We specifically target adults (coaches, teachers, parents) to help them support these changes in their daily interactions with athletes and youth in general. These social mentors, parents and teachers are called adult partners. Coaches are particularly important to us because they have regular and ongoing access to young people who are already playing sports. We see this approach as an opportunity for coaches to play a key role in promoting healthy lifestyles among their teams. We train in a full curriculum called “Coach 4 Life” to improve coaches to deliver new NCD and HIV information between athletes and help them have a positive impact on behavioral changes. Thanks to this program, participants (friendly adults) are created as listeners who can create enough positive values in healthy life to take care of your health and healthy body.
We teach adult partners to be role models for young athletes. How insiders lead their personal lives. Young players look to them for guidance on how to eat, train and behave regardless of whether they are HIV positive or not. We also work with trainers as trainers. If clinicians are well trained and supported, they can provide guidance on NCDs and HIV to team members who seek their support. Doctors can also provide information on where, how and when to access certain services, including access to condoms, seeking psychological support, testing for STDs and more.
We also have the support of sports stars who have made a name for themselves in their communities and the country in all sports. We understand the power of their celebrity status and the influence they have on young athletes. We are particularly positively affected by partners who can talk about healthy life and live in the values and behaviors we want to live. These well -known athletes and women experience basic training that helps us work and change among young people and allows people to report these messages for thousands of young people.
loveLife groundBREAKERs also support all Department of Sport, Arts and Culture events with Edutainment where health, wellbeing and nutrition is discussed with athletes and spectators on the day through motivational talks, fun activities, Mobile Y-Centre (MYC) activations, song and dance. The partnership with the department that allows loveLife messaging to be shared at sport and recreation events allows loveLife to have access to a large audience of young people at one time due to the popularity of sport events but also it allows for sport to play an important role in social change and youth leadership development.
