17 Mar 2014

On March 22, a non-governmental organization for the youth by the youth will be unveiled at the University of Botswana amphitheater, amidst much hype and hope that finally, issues pertaining to the youth of Botswana will be given centre-stage.

Young 1ove, as the NGO is called, is set to tackle issues mostly encouraging the youth to commit to one partner and the NGO will exclusively be for the youth.

With the tagline “connecting youth to life-saving information”, the youth will be exposed to issues mostly dealing with HIV and AIDS and how to best navigate one’s life in these trying times.

BOPA had a sit down with three of the eleven people who run the NGO and this is what they had to say.

Abigail Mmyikisa, Noam Angrist and Thato Letsomo are part of the team that runs the organisation and they indicated that the launch will be on a Saturday, March 22 from 6pm to 9pm.

“Entrance is free and we will have artists such as Apollo Diablo, Sasa Klaas, Team Distant, Dj T-Izzy, Staxxx to liven up the night,” said Abigail Mmyikisa, who also added that she will be performing a theme song for their NGO along with Apollo and Staxxx.

She indicated that she is also an artist and goes by the stage name of “Abb7y”. Noam Angrist indicated that the team that runs Young 1ove consists of three international students on scholarships with Botswana Baylor Children’s Clinic, some are corporate personalities and some are locals and schooling at UB.

“Our main focus with this NGO is to tackle issues of intergenerational relationships and so far we have already had discussions with four schools in Palapye and they received us very well,” said Noam Angrist.

He further said the programme that they presented to students showed statistical results of HIV and AIDS prevalence amongst these intergenerational relationships.

“We need to break this cycle of older men/women dating very young girls/boys, and in turn when these young girls/boys grow into older people, they in turn date younger people. It is a vicious cycle that needs to be halted,” he said.

The launch of the NGO will include among others, video presentation, live interactive, SMS discussion and Tumie Ramsden will be the guest speaker at the launch.

It is worth noting that the launch is sponsored by the United States of America Embassy in Botswana, University of Botswana, Botswana Educational Research Association and The Voice newspaper.  ENDS