The Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities (DWYPD) has welcomed the launch of Higher Health’s first Comfort Room at Ekurhuleni East TVET College’s Springs Campus.
Higher Education and Training Deputy Minister, Dr Nomusa Dube-Ncube, led the official launch on Thursday, with Deputy Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities Mmapaseka Steve Letsike delivering the keynote address.
The Comfort Room is designed as a safe, accessible and stigma-free environment where students can pause, speak openly, seek assistance, access information and connect with appropriate support, without fear of judgement or stigma.
Letsike described the initiative as a practical intervention to help students access support for mental health, gender-based violence (GBV), HIV, and other psychosocial challenges.
“The Comfort Room may appear, at first, to be a physical space. But its meaning is much larger than the walls that contain it,” Letsike said.
Letsike said young people often carry personal challenges into institutions of learning, including mental health difficulties, GBV, HIV-related stigma, discrimination, social isolation, financial anxiety, and other psychosocial vulnerabilities.
“A student does not stop being a young woman when she enters a lecture hall. A student does not stop being queer when they register for a qualification. A student living with HIV does not leave stigma at the campus gate.”
She said access to education should mean more than simply entering an institution.
“It must also mean the ability to remain there, to feel safe there, to belong there, to complete a qualification, to transition into the world of work and ultimately to live with dignity,” she said.
Comfort Room offering
The Comfort Room builds on Higher Health’s established peer-to-peer and peer education model, recognising that young people are often more willing to speak to people they trust and with whom they can relate.
The space can support initiatives including Survivor Clubs, which provide peer support, solidarity and pathways to professional assistance for survivors of GBV.
It can also host Transforming Mentalities Clubs, providing space for reflection, accountability and behavioural change, as well as peer forums for young people living with HIV aimed at reducing stigma, improving treatment literacy, and promoting psychosocial wellbeing.
Other support includes mental health and wellbeing conversations, self-risk assessments, counselling referrals and peer-led assistance. The Comfort Room can also facilitate civic and soft-skills learning covering GBV, mental health, HIV, resilience, relationships, and emotional intelligence.
Getting help
Higher Health is the national agency responsible for providing holistic health and wellbeing support to students across South Africa’s post-school education and training sector.
Letsike said the initiative is particularly important in addressing gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF), noting that interventions should not only focus on responding to violence after it occurs, but also on prevention, early identification, survivor support and changing harmful social norms.
According to Higher Health, approximately 394,216 students have completed GBV self-risk assessments over the past four years, with more than 20,000 subsequently seeking psychosocial assistance or requesting support.
In mental health, more than 457,000 self-risk assessments have been completed, with approximately 188,651 young people identified as needing or actively seeking psychosocial support.
“Behind every one of those numbers is a human being. Perhaps the most important achievement is not simply that someone received a service. It is that somebody was finally able to say: I need help. Because stigma survives in silence,” Letsike said.
Safety and shaping society
She also stressed that the Comfort Room must remain genuinely inclusive and safe for all students, including lesbian, transgender and HIV-positive students, as well as students with disabilities.
“Safety cannot be majoritarian. If a space is safe only for those whose identities are socially comfortable, then it is not yet a safe space.”
Letsike also linked student wellbeing to broader questions of democracy, human rights and citizenship, urging young people to participate actively in shaping society.
She said citizenship extended beyond voting to include standing against discrimination, supporting peers experiencing mental health challenges, challenging HIV stigma, advocating for accessibility, and holding institutions and leaders accountable.
“The measure of today's success will not be the ribbon we cut. It will be what happens tomorrow when a student walks through that door. Do they find judgement, or dignity? Do they find bureaucracy, or assistance? Do they find silence, or somebody prepared to listen?” Letsike said.
She said the ambition should be to expand the Comfort Room model across universities, TVET colleges and Community Education and Training colleges throughout the country.
“One successful Comfort Room is an important beginning. But a higher education system in which every young person knows that there is a safe door they can walk through is something much greater.
“It is institutional culture. It is social justice. And, in one small but powerful room, it is the promise of our Constitution becoming real,” Letsike said. – SAnews.gov.za
