Siyaphambili Youth

Siyaphambili Youth is a co-development project that works with young people in South Africa to develop understandings of risk, agency and safety to violence and HIV and co-develop interventions.

Project Summary

Young people have few effective interventions that address the interlinked epidemics of intimate partner violence and HIV. This is particularly true among very marginalized groups, such as those living in urban informal settlements and rural communities. Developing better understandings of the causes of this and how to intervene is critical.

Siyaphambili Youth seeks to address this through a long-term co-development project working with youth peer research assistants (YPRAs) in urban informal settlements, and rural communities in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Working intensively with YPRAs in these settings we hope to understand better how contexts shape health, and where the YPRAs see change being a possibility in their lives.

The project will co-develop interventions based on YPRAs own understandings and then evaluate them through a pilot randomized controlled trial. This has the potential to address the exceedingly high burden of violence and HIV among young margainalised people.