Sweet Life Diabetes Community: Providing critical diabetes education to South Africans with diabetes
Diabetes is the number one killer of women in South Africa, number two killer of men. There is no national diabetes education programme, which means people don’t understand their condition - they are dying unnecessarily. Sweet Life is South Africa’s leading voice in diabetes, and we have the solution: a WhatsApp diabetes education chatbot.
Last year, Sweet Life and the Diabetes Center Berne came together when co-founder Bridget participated in the DCB Open Innovation Challenge – and we’ve maintained a valuable exchange ever since. Now it’s time to join forces to reach out to the whole community and get it into the hands of the people who need it most. Help us give South Africans with diabetes the tools they need to survive!
How will your donation help?
Your donation helps us give South Africans with diabetes the tools they need to stay alive. We know that knowledge is power, but that knowledge has to be in the right format, and the right language, at the right health literacy level, to the right person - exactly when they need it. We know how to do this, we just need help financing our work.
Each donation empowers more South Africans with diabetes.
Where will your donation go?
We have spent the last 3 years developing foundational diabetes education content that we have been sending to clinics nationwide in leaflet form. The problem with print, however, is that it’s expensive and difficult to distribute. WhatsApp solves this problem by giving us direct access to people on their phones (we have 96% WhatsApp penetration in South Africa!)
Your donation will fund our full-time project manager, content development (text, images, video), translation and - critically - our monitoring and evaluation. We’ve created focus groups across South Africa to test that this chatbot is truly useful, and understandable. Our community is at the heart of everything we do.
Luckily, Swiss Francs translate to a lot of South African Rands! Any donation you can offer helps more South Africans with diabetes stay alive.
Find out more about us at www.sweetlife.org.za
