LALA #PutStigmaToBed was a digital public education campaign developed by the Foundation for Professional Development (FPD) with funding from Grand Challenges Canada (Stars in Global Health). The project piloted an accessible, youth-focused online intervention designed to educate and inform young South Africans (aged 18–24) about the LGBTQIA+ community and the challenges its members face.

Through an interactive website, a learning quiz, social media outreach and a data-free mobile application, LALA reached more than 113,000 people across all nine provinces of South Africa, over eleven times its original target.

While LGBTQIA+ individuals share the same constitutional rights as everyone else in South Africa, many still experience stigma and discrimination, including violations of their human dignity, verbal abuse, and physical or sexual assault. Beliefs, attitudes and cultural norms can all contribute to this discrimination.

Young people are especially vulnerable. LGBTQIA+ youth who are still establishing their identity and place in society may live in fear, drop out of school, leave home, or experience self-harm. Educating all young people about the myths and misconceptions surrounding gender identity and sexual orientation can improve the mental health, physical health, wellbeing and safety of LGBTQIA+ youth.

LALA was built on a simple idea: information changes attitudes, and changed attitudes save lives.

Early in the pilot, the team learned that the cost of mobile data was a major barrier preventing young South Africans from engaging with the website.

To overcome this, LALA partnered with the Moya App, a popular data-free messaging service, and launched a lightweight Progressive Web Application (PWA): a streamlined, data-free version of the LALA experience.

The team continuously improved the experience based on what users responded to:

• Version 1 introduced the learning quiz and KAP questionnaire in a data-free format.
• Version 2 added shorter quizzes, real messages from LGBTQIA+ people sharing their lived experience, an interactive puzzle and an infographic, and saw engagement and completion rates rise.

This pivot to a free, mobile-first experience was the single biggest driver of the project’s reach.

LALA demonstrated that digital, data-free tools can reach young South Africans at scale when traditional and paid social channels fall short. It also confirmed a well-established truth in public health: shifting deeply held attitudes and behaviours is complex and takes time and repeated exposure rather than a single interaction.

These insights are now shaping how FPD designs future stigma-reduction campaigns, including offering learners repeated, low-barrier touchpoints over time.

The LALA team shared its findings through an oral presentation titled “Use of innovation to reach and to sensitise adolescents on LGBTQIA+ stigmatisation” at the 1st SA Mental Health Conference in 2023, so that other organisations can learn from and build on the LALA model.