News | 31 Oct 2019
South Africa has 25 universities and 50 Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges (FETs) with close to 427 campuses and a student population of around 1.5 million. Campuses are where young people, enjoying freedoms not available at school, learn, grow and discover who they are – sexually as well as emotionally. The risky behaviours associated with student life like drinking, drug-taking and casual sex make students more vulnerable to HIV and AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. But there are other factors putting students, particularly female students, at risk such as high rates of sexual violence and mental…
News | 30 Oct 2019
Training has begun for No Means No Worldwide’s IMpower programme in South Africa. A group of dedicated young women from NACOSA and partner organisations on the Adolescent Girls and Young Women programme have come together in Cape Town to start the intensive process of becoming facilitators for the empowerment self-defense programme proven to reduce rape by up to 50%. IMpower teaches women and girls between 10 and 20 how to identify risk early, how to say no effectively, and, if that doesn’t work, how to use physical self-defense to escape danger. IMpower also helps boys and young men understand that…
Publications, Research | 30 Oct 2019
NACOSA’s Rene Sparks, together with the UWC School of Public Health, presented an abstract poster on client experience of Primary Health Care services prior to and post the implementation of appointment systems at the Public Health South Africa conference. The poster presented the findings of a qualitative study to explore and understand clients’ experience, their perceived role in shaping the recently established appointment system and how they were introduced to the appointment system within city health clinics in the Western Cape Province. The study was part of a pilot initiative and focused on understanding how the appointment system has impacted…
