EDITOR'S NOTE: Michal McDowell is a sophomore at the International High School of Indiana. Last summer, she traveled to South Africa with her mother, Jennifer Drobac, a board member for the California-based Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which focuses on major health care issues. The foundation is one of several funders for loveLife, and its officials toured loveLife facilities to determine whether to renew their pledge in 2005.

I watched my step as I walked through the slums of Soweto, South Africa, carefully avoiding the open latrines. I wanted to vomit; the smell of human waste was everywhere. Surrounding me were tiny shacks no bigger than my bed at home.

As part of a group from the Kaiser Family Foundation touring the area, I learned that victims of AIDS, tuberculosis and abuse fill this run-down township. Everywhere I turned, I heard wheezing and crying. I had read about these places infested with disease, but I always put aside those thoughts like some distant nightmare. They are real.

According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, more than 5 million of the 44 million people in South Africa have HIV. At the current rate of infection, South African teens have a greater than 50 percent chance of contracting HIV/AIDS.

South Africa has, in response, started a national HIV education campaign funded by government and media, as well as private donors such as the Kaiser and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations.

Since 1999, loveLife has taken a multi-pronged approach to its mission. Its information campaign is carried via television, radio and newspaper, as well as on outdoor media such as billboards and on the Web. It also has a toll-free telephone hotline to answer young people's questions about sexual health, and it is working to add adolescent health services to public clinics across the country. In addition, it has built 16 multipurpose centers, called Y-centers, to engage youth, and it sponsors the country's largest interscholastic sports competition, featuring contests in a range of activities, from soccer to table tennis.

Through sexual education, physical activity and fun, loveLife gives young people hope.

"These programs help young people to be able to shape their own futures," said Sibulele Sibaca, 21, who works at loveLife's headquarters in Johannesburg.

Unlike other HIV/AIDS prevention programs, loveLife brings a youth perspective to everything it does. Youth are featured in its brochures and commercials and also contribute to its print and Web materials, which emphasize dignity, responsibility and respect for the individual and for a partner.

In addition, many older youth -- ages 18 to 25 -- serve as GroundBREAKERS, volunteers who sign up for a year to bring the campaign to their communities, operating loveLife youth centers.

These GroundBREAKERS say the children they encounter are often angry, depressed, insecure or bored. Many have resorted to drugs, alcohol, sex with multiple partners and prostitution. Some are suicidal.

"Young people are forced into situations where they must feed their families, but the only way to do it is to sleep with someone, obviously without a condom," said Sibaca. "Young people are constantly faced with issues such as peer pressure, low self-esteem and poverty. Sometimes they sleep with older people for the sake of buying clothes or looking good. Being popular is everything."

Sibaca said GroundBREAKERS reach out "by having constant face-to-face interaction with young people in schools and Y-centers," which are small buildings located in poor areas. Each usually has some type of athletic facility, a computer room, a sex-education room, an HIV/AIDS testing room, a social room and a kitchen.

"The centers are aimed at educating young people not only about HIV/AIDS prevalence, but also about how to lead a healthy lifestyle," Sibaca said.

GroundBREAKERS are creating healthy futures not only for loveLife participants, but also for themselves.

"Before I change others, I must change myself," said Susan Mkosi, a 23-year-old GroundBREAKER in Witbank, Mpumalanga.

"We are the ones raising the (HIV) statistics; we are the only ones who can stop it," added Sibaca, who lost both parents to AIDS before she was 18.

Sibaca's mother died first, in 1996, and her father died in 2000. Desperate and alone, she began seeking attention from "all the wrong people." She also began to have doubts about those she loved most.

"I felt that someone was out to punish me -- thoughts came to my mind of 'Had I been a bad child? Did I deserve all this?' " she recalled. "I found out later via the grapevine that both my parents had passed away from AIDS and that my father, the man I loved and honored, had actually infected my mother."

In 2001, she joined the campaign. "LoveLife found me and transformed me from a young girl who was completely lost with no direction to a young lady who knows what she wants and how she is going to get it," she said.

Other GroundBREAKERS are equally confident about loveLife's impact on young people. A nationwide evaluation conducted last year by the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, found that 85 percent of South Africa's youth had heard about loveLife.

In a survey of more than 12,000 youth ages 15 to 24, more than one-third had participated in four or more loveLife programs, such as the loveLife Games sports competition, or visiting a Y-center or youth-friendly clinic. About one-fourth said they did something as a result of the loveLife campaign, such as talking with a friend, abstaining from sex or using condoms.

However, loveLife needs money. Since it receives a large portion of its funds in U.S. dollars, that aid has been cut significantly by the dollar's weak exchange rate. One result is that loveLife has been unable to answer more than one-third of the 300,000 calls it receives every month on the hotline.

The GroundBREAKERS believe loveLife has much more work to do.

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