in celebration of the International Day for the Boychild

2025 Theme: “Building Self-Esteem in Boys: Stand Up, Be Heard, Be Seen”

Date: Friday, 16 May 2025

GAUTENG BOYCHILD SECTOR PARLIAMENT

International Day of the Boychild is on the 16th of May. It was founded in 2018 by Dr Jerome Teelucksingh, a university lecturer from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. It focuses on boys well-being, their need to feel happy, healthy, and valued within family and community.

The Republic of South Africa is an incredibly diverse country, that prides itself in the beauty of vibrant ethnicity and culture. Her deep history displays a fundamental cornerstone to promote cultural diversity, social cohesion, reconciliation, peace and economic development. The Republic through the Constitution Preamble continues to thrive to heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights, improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person, lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people, in which every citizen is equally protected by law, and build a united and democratic South Africa that is able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.

SECTOR PARLIAMENT IMPACT

In the 2025 State of the Province Address (SOPA), Gauteng Province Premier, Mr Panyaza Lesufi has identified thirteen challenges the Province faces, and amongst the thirteen is increased gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF). This event serves as part of the interventions to address the scourge.

The event will be realised in the GDSD reporting of APP targets within the Social Welfare Services Programmes, Restorative Services & Services to Children, through Masupatsela programme. The event will further raise GBV awareness through topic dialogues. This will tap to the key expectation to heighten awareness about GBVF.

This event will not only fulfill the mandate of GDSD, resemble a culture of a caring Gauteng Province, but will recognise the boychild. The country has seen astonishingly inflated statistics of gender-based violence, substance abuse and homelessness that is at times caused by societal factors, and through the event will build up programmes and the main event. The participating boys will be given a different outlook on life, against the odds they face daily. As the Gauteng Province continues to set new trends across the country, this event will fly the flag high in nurturing the boychild, and thus guiding society towards changing toxic norms and transforming as the world evolves.