Young Africa Live (YAL)

Young Africa Live consists of a combination of regularly updated stories and live chats and a series of permanent content pieces.

The permanent content is designed to cover the basic facts around HIV and AIDS, as well as provide helpline numbers and contact details for referral organisations, aiming to support YAL users in times of need. Under the content section, daily news and celebrity stories are posted, and users can ‘like' the story or leave comments. Guest bloggers write about their experiences with love, sex, dating, cultural dilemmas, gender stereotypes, and other relevant issues. In addition, live chats with doctors and relationship experts help create a dialogue between the portal and its users.

Objectives include the following:

1. "Share information & Educate - Make crucial health and lifestyle information available via the mobile portal and reach more than 30 million South Africans every month. The aim is to educate young people in Africa about HIV/AIDS and other sexual health issues in a fun, engaging, interactive, gender-sensitive, and entertaining way.
2.  Generate Discussion - Through a gender-specific blog (i.e. a male and female writer will write daily blogs from their gender's perspective) where portal visitors can comment and have their voices heard, on topics such as HIV/ AIDS, health, relationships, sex, sexuality, love, and gender issues.
3.  Promote HIV testing - Through easy-to-use portal information and linkages to VCT (voluntary counseling and testing) centres. If we conservatively say that 20% of the South African population are HIV-positive, that means 20% of the users on this mobile portal will be HIV-positive, but might not know their status and might continue practicing risky behavior and putting themselves and their loved ones at risk of infection. It is therefore crucial that we use this platform to, through interactive discussion, create enough peer pressure that young people will test themselves for HIV."

The website has collected data for a survey based on polls run on the YAL platform since December 2010. The poll responders are all YAL users, with 51% being over 16 but under 24, and 35% over 24 but under 35. Poll results are described on the Praekelt website.

HIV/AIDS

According to the site's sponsor, the Praekelt Foundation, "Young Africa Live (YAL) was born out of the discovery that in a country with the biggest HIV/AIDS pandemic in the world, one of South Africa's largest mobile portals did not hold a single piece of information about the pandemic; where to get tested; how to practice safe sex and how to avoid getting it. This discovery sparked an idea at Praekelt Foundation to build a mobile platform that is entertainment-oriented, fun, interactive, and provocative. A platform that would not simply state the facts and "lecture" young people about the do's and donts, but rather create a space where young South Africans could talk about hot topics that affect their daily lives: love, sex, relationships, gender, and cultural issues, as well as HIV/AIDS."