About Us

Luvatsi is a Swazi word that means a spark or causing a chain reaction like wild fire. The organisation was formed in August 2006 at a conference convened by young people mobilised from various rural areas of Swaziland with the objective to find solutions to an array socioeconomic and political challenges confronting the youth. The founding conference was held at a time when the dominant headlines and narratives about the prospects for the Swazi child was alarmingly bleak. The country was the epicentre of HIV and AIDS in the world, life expectancy was nearing 33 years, youth unemployment 60%, the burden of nursing the sick was weighing heavy on the youth, public policy and national leadership was absent. The impetus to resort to drugs, alcohol, and crime or simply flee and go looking for better prospects elsewhere in the world was strong. The motivation for the formation of the organisation was captured by the founding declaration, as follows:

“Young people in our country are the most affected and impacted upon by the spectra of unemployment, poverty, neglect, HIV and Aids, malnutrition, hunger, underdevelopment, loss of dignity, sense of exclusion from meaningful participation in all forms; socially, economically and political affairs of our country.

Further, that besides the small fraction of young people constituting less than 3% who are receiving government support to enroll in some institutions of higher learning, the Overwhelming majority of school leavers are languishing in a deep hole of darkness and hopelessness without any means or guidance to either create self-employment or find employment nor is there a government strategy or plan to address the specific circumstances of the youth or help mitigate the negative impact of unemployment through other forms of social, economic and political interventions. Consequently, the majority of the young people of the country find themselves in an environment and circumstances which is without hope that tomorrow will be better than yesterday or that development will ever reach their rural communities and the poor or that they will ever have a place in the affairs of the country, or that they will ever attain any skills that will enable them to be valued members of the their communities capable of earning or making a decent living for themselves and their families. Therefore observed that these conditions strongly contribute to the desperate and uncontrollable spread of HIV and Aids, the accelerated decay in social moral standards, crime, substance abuse, low self-esteem, unplanned pregnancies, break down of family structures and values etc.”