When she was four years old, Selokela Molamodi’s teacher asked the class what they wanted to be when they grew up. While her classmates volunteered more conventional professions, such as nurses, doctors and lawyers, Ms Molamodi’s answer, given with a fiery determination, was, “I want to be Minister of Education.”

Her love for education, and her characteristic fieriness, has stood 19-year-old Ms Molamodi in good stead. Last year she graduated top of her class, having been head girl in both primary school and high school. Armed with an unshakeable self-confidence and her core principles of transparency, honesty and humility, Ms Molamodi has avoided the fate of many young South African women—HIV infection, unintended pregnancy and an abandoned high school education.

She says she has had to deal with the same harsh realities as other young women—financial difficulties, crime, violence, peer pressure, the temptation of “blessers” [older men] and drug and alcohol abuse. Staying in school kept her focused, she explained.

“There are still a lot of misconceptions about HIV among young people. Sex is not talked about openly. Young people are given knowledge about sexual and reproductive health, but they are not given knowledge on how to make a decision about sex,” she says.

In South Africa, 1500 young women and adolescent girls between the ages of 15 and 24 are infected with HIV every week. They accounted for 29% of all new HIV infections in the country in 2017. Research has shown that older men, generally five to eight years older, are mostly responsible for passing on HIV to younger women; once women reach their mid-twenties, they pass on the virus to men their own age.

“There is a perception among young women that we should have a high number of sexual partners when we are young because that is what it means to be free. Then, when we reach our mid-twenties we will leave that life behind and settle down. But girls don’t understand that they don’t have control over these sexual relationships, that their consent doesn’t count,” she says.

To start a dialogue about these and many other issues facing young women, Ms Molamodi started You for You while she was in her final year of school.

“I call it a movement, not an organization,” says Ms Molamodi. “It is about accepting and loving yourself for you. While we can exist as a community and a collective, we must first love ourselves as individuals,” she says.

Ms Molamodi, along with two friends who started the movement with her, have one-on-one mentoring sessions with other young women on issues such as self-esteem, body positivity, sexual and reproductive health and drug and alcohol abuse. She has also organized two events that focused on empowering young women as leaders “so we can rise as young women and stand up against discrimination, together.”

She looks at DREAMS—the initiative led by the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief—as the matriarch of a family of young women like her. In South Africa, DREAMS works closely with She Conquers, a government-led national campaign aimed at empowering young women and adolescent girls to take responsibility for their health.

“DREAMS/She Conquers has provided us with a space to have natural conversations about things that affect us as young women with other young women. It gives us a voice and brings enlightenment to us. For instance, most of the girls I know have tested for HIV, but none of them ever got to talk about it, until DREAMS/She Conquers came to our school,” she says.

“These are the kinds of initiatives that increase the effectiveness of what UNAIDS is trying to achieve,” says Ms Molamodi. “Yes, give girls access to discrimination-free HIV prevention and treatment services and family planning, but also ask for our feedback. Give us education and information and teach us that actions have consequences which are responsible for our progress or regress.”

She says she would like to see conversations about HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health being brought together more often with those about careers, empowerment and entrepreneurship.

As for her ambition for You for You, “I want to help grow a continent of young women who are confident enough to speak out; who are able to stand up for each other and empower each other. If I have someone say, “I did not give up” then I know I had a purpose; that I was someone’s reason not to give up.”