Soul Buddyz turns kids into social change agents and SA’s next generation of young leaders

The Soul City Institute for Social ­Justice, a nongovernmental organisation registered in 1995, built its early reputation on behaviour change communication through mass media: television, radio and booklets.

One of its flagship TV programmes, Soul Buddyz, followed young people identifying social problems in their communities and taking action to address them. The response from children watching at home was overwhelming, said Phinah Kodisang, CEO of the Soul City Institute.

“Soul City started receiving a lot of requests from young people,” she said. “At the end of the credits the producers would put the address, and there were a lot of ­letters written by children who were saying, ‘I want to be in the Soul Buddyz Club. How do I join?’”

This groundswell of demand from children themselves gave birth to what is now a nationally implemented school-based programme. By 2002 Soul City had secured permission from the Department of Education to bring the clubs into schools.

More than two decades later, the Soul Buddyz Club operates in all nine provinces and, as of last week, was in discussions with the Lesotho government about cross-border expansion.

The clubs serve children between the ages of eight and 14 in primary schools. Each club, which has between 15 and 25 members, elects its own chairperson, secretary and treasurer. The children run their own weekly meetings, do fundraising and implement community projects ranging from soup kitchens and clothing drives to food gardens.

“They are not just children,” Kodisang said. “They are seen as leaders, and they are capacitated to be social change agents in their communities.”

The programme’s curriculum is developed in alignment with the Department of Basic Education’s CAPS framework and co-reviewed with the Department of Health. Magazines, written in age-appropriate language, cover comprehensive ­sexuality education, HIV prevention, ­gender-based violence, mental health, financial literacy and children’s rights.

Impactful results

The impact has been measurable. A retrospective study conducted from about 2016 to 2019 tracked Soul Buddyz members from a decade before. The findings were striking: most remained HIV negative and credited the programme for it; many were in leadership positions and attributed their outlook on life to the club; and young women who had participated were less likely to have experienced teenage or unwanted pregnancy.

“I believe that’s why, even to date, the department still partners with us to implement it in their schools,” said Kodisang.

The Soul Buddyz Club’s approach is rooted in the philosophy that the most effective moment to shape attitudes towards equality, justice and safety is during childhood.

“These are the adults of tomorrow,” said Kodisang. “You are able, at that age, to frame and shape how they see the world through the eyes of equality, equity, justice. And when they see that, you then at least have created some leverage of having adults who are caring and nonviolent, and who are able to use communication to solve problems.”

Funding constraints have reduced the number of active clubs from a peak of 15,000 to just more than 1,000 today. At its height, clubs competed in a national grading system, with winners receiving computers and tablets for their schools, and many children going on their first flight.

“I remember one of the former buddies saying that the first feeling of being [on a plane] was what motivated him to want to be a pilot,” Kodisang said.

To stretch its reach, the institute provides schools with print-ready digital copies of its magazines, trains community-based organisations to implement the programme and uses social media to engage children it cannot reach in person.

The essence of the Soul Buddyz Club, Kodisang insisted, has not been lost.

“We want to create a world that is different from the world we are experiencing – where violence is how we solve problems, where disregard for other people’s rights is the norm,” she said.

The letters from children who wanted to join a club they saw on television are long gone. But the movement they sparked is still growing – one club, one community and one young leader at a time. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.