Vision

  • Children of Africa healthy and empowered to reach their full potential.

Mission

  • Global Camps Africa equips South Africa’s vulnerable youth with the tools and knowledge to lead healthy, empowered lives and make positive impacts on their communities.

Need

  • Poverty: More than 55% of South Africans live below the poverty line.

  • Education: South African schools are severely underfunded and lack many of the resources necessary for proper educational instruction. The ultimate consequence of this is that many South African youth, though they attend school, are not properly educated.

  • Unemployment: The youth unemployment rate in South Africa is extremely high, registering at nearly 50%. Not only does this dishearten young South Africans, but it also results in financial instability, leaving them unable to support themselves or pave a path out of poverty.

  • Mental Health: South Africa’s population has some of the poorest mental health in the world. South African youth are especially prone to suffering from poor mental health. A wide variety of factors contribute to this, including cultural stigma associated with mental health issues, lack of mental health care, and a waning connection with family members.

  • Teenage Pregnancy: Studies show that more than 16% of adolescent South African girls (aged 15-19) have given birth. From 2017 to 2021, births to young teenage girls (aged 10-14) increased by 48.7%, and births to adolescent girls (aged 15-19) increased by 17.9%.

  • Domestic Violence: In 2021, more than 30% of South African women (aged 15-49) experienced intimate partner violence

  • HIV/AIDS: South Africa has the largest HIV epidemic in the world, with 7.7 million people living with HIV and over 50,000 deaths per year due to AIDS. There are 160,000 children (aged 0-14) living with HIV and over 640,000 million orphaned children (aged 0-17) due to AIDS. Finally, only 45.8% of people aged 15-24 can correctly answer simple questions about how to prevent the spread of HIV.

OUR Response

Access to curriculum-based sex and HIV education programs is a powerful tool for prevention. Many adolescents who participate in curriculum-based HIV-prevention education programs experience delayed or decreased sexual behavior and/or increased condom use. Programs for children and adolescents are most effective when they include life skills, especially those that enhance their ability to refuse sex, insist on condom use, and avoid unsafe situations. Global Camps Africa provides curriculum-based programs through camps and year-round clubs that focus on the development of life skills, equipping young people with the tools they need to lead healthy, empowered lives, including:

Statistics taken from 2023 UNAIDS report and Avert.org.