In our blog we will introduce the wide range of services and activities that are being offered at our Health Academy. Every week one of the WKU team members gives you an insight into why the Health Academy is so popular and successful in Edendale.

On a 3-monthly basis we do a sexual risk assessment for all who are between the ages of 11 and 20 years, who come to the Health Academy. In the sexual risk assessment we check if the young person has done an HIV test before and if so when that was and what the results had been.

If we find a boy or girl is already sexually active, we try to get more details about their sexual behaviour. We want to know how many sexual partners he/she had and what gender and age they were. The ages and number of sexual partners is often related to the young person's socio-economic situation. In these assessments we often experience that young people tell us very heart-breaking stories about their lives.

Last year, a 16-year old girl came to the Health Academy who had four boyfriends at the time. She really liked one of the boys. The other three were because she needed a place to sleep. She figured if she has many boyfriends she is guaranteed a bed every night.

This young girl has two siblings, her mother's sister passed away and her family took the aunt's four children. The father's brother also passed away and left two children behind. The girl's family took them, too. This made a total of nine children (under 18 years) and two adults living in a one-bedroom house.

The kids sleep in the kitchen on the floor and the adults in the bedroom. The house is built on a sloppy mountain. Whoever gets home early will get a nicer spot on the floor to sleep. The girl's solution was to have boyfriends so she can sleep on a bed and also have more delicious food (instead of cabbage which they often eat at home).

After the girl had visited the Health Academy and we learnt about her story during the risk assessment, we then referred the family to the social workers to assist these parents to start receiving foster care grant so that they can be able to take care of all the children.

The sexual risk assessments are important for all the youth. We hope that we can get more of them to come and visit us at the Health Academy. It is the best way for us to find out who is at risk and needs our help.

What we do is not only a job for us. It simply feels good to be able to help the people. And when we see people like this girl, who we have helped for a better future, then this is a good reward for the hard work.