South Africa’s LifeLine Johannesburg, a humanitarian organisation focused on counselling, has partnered with Africa’s fastest growing social networking site Mxit to offer mobile chat platform for counselling services during October’s Mental Health Awareness (MHA) month.
LifeLine Johannesburg’s acting director Janet King said: “This is exciting news for our non-profit counselling organisation as it opens up a whole new world for our callers – especially those who cannot afford a telephone call.”
He added that Mxit in partnership with RLabs has started training LifeLine Johannesburg’s trainer Niren Uithairaj, w
ho will train those who are interested in online counselling.
According to Mxit, the service is aimed at reaching out to people aged between 12 to 29, who are frequent users of social media.
Currently, LifeLine Johannesburg is using the Mxit platform to facilitate communication with youngsters through the Girls and Boys on the Move project, which teaches young people to make wise decisions about their sexuality, HIV and learning.
Mxit official Marlon Parker said: “At Mxit Reach we’ve always believed that creating the opportunity for non-profit and social organisations to leverage mobile technology to empower communities is crucial in the uplifting of society.”
Parker further hailed the partnership saying, “The opportunity to collaborate with LifeLine Johannesburg to engage with their audience via Mxit is definitely a partnership we are excited about and hope that this will set a trend by non-profits to leverage technology more for social change.”
Founded in 1963 in Australia,LifeLine Johannesburg is a non-profit organisation that provides counselling services to facilitate emotional wellness of individuals and communities. It became operational in 1969 and has so far trained 250 volunteer counsellors across Johannesburg.
Each year,October is set aside as Mental Health Awareness (MHA) month. From October 7 to 14, Mental Health Awareness week is celebrated across the globe.
