Thema Maseti (right) is responsible for a total of four loveLife Centres and is always ready to listen. Programming with Einstein: Ayanda Sali (right) teaches children how to use a computer. The province on the Indian Ocean coast has a twinning partnership with the German State of Lower Saxony, the home of Volkswagen. Some 1.2 million people live in Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, which not only includes Uitenhage, but also the nearby coastal hub of Port Elizabeth. Like the rest of South Africa, unemployment, corruption, and, more recently, a renewed increase in HIV infection rates, are part of everyday life. Many have a distrust of politics, and there is great frustration. A great deal of progress has been made since apartheid ended in 1994, but much still remains to be done. That is why the work at the loveLife Centre is so important, not just for the district and the city, but much further afield as well. There are loveLife Centres all over the country, but according to Nonkqubela Maliza, Director of Corporate & Government Affairs at Volkswagen South Africa, this one is something special. 62 “It’s this center’s leadership that makes it so exceptional,” Ms. Maliza says on a visit to the center. “The change theory behind loveLife is that you must love your own life, that you must master your own destiny, if you want to bring about change. So the change you are seeking must begin within yourself. Then you can take it into your community.”
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