Love Your Nuts was founded to get more young men talking about their health and how to spot the early signs of testicular cancer; they hope to take the message to every young man in South Africa by building a gaming app.
Cape Town, South Africa (11 November 2022) – 57-year-old Torsten Koehler was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1995 at the age of 30. The diagnosis came as a shock and back then before the internet was accessible, he was completely isolated in his journey – but he survived and decided to make a difference.
Koehler spent two decades building up his network and knowledge base, before launching the non-profit, “Love Your Nuts” in 2014. As testicular cancer affects men as young as 15 up to 45 and over, he focused on educating the youth. He made it his mission to teach his sex education students in Namibia about the cancer.
“Men in general don’t talk about their feelings or their health, and for young men, this is even more true. Young men often feel that they need to stand their ground, show they are strong and buy into the ‘men don’t cry’ fallacy. What I tried to do with my classes is to break the stigma around this taboo topic and shatter the shyness around testicular cancer”
For the past eight years, Love Your Nuts has toured schools within South Africa with its Cancer Smart School Programme and has reached over 34 700 individuals face-to-face at various events with its message.
The goal of Love Your Nuts is to raise awareness about testicular cancer by educating communities. It is a rarely spoken about cancer that often remains undetected in young adults. This is due to the diverse South African society, where cultural taboos, stigmas and a lack of knowledge about the subject are widespread.
“We support men diagnosed with testicular cancer emotionally. It is often easier to share thoughts and fears with a survivor than a family member or friend. Building a network of survivors nationwide/worldwide that support patients is an ongoing process.”
Koehler says that knowledge and early detection are the best weapons against cancer.
“If we can educate our children early in their lives, the survival rate will be much higher. Changing the behaviour of young people by teaching them to look after their health will lead to a healthier next generation who will uplift their communities.”
It is this educational focus that has inspired Koehler to launch the Love Your Nuts App. In its prototype phase, Koehler hopes to fund the app and roll it out to the youth, who will be able to have access to vital information and support from anywhere in South Africa.
The hope is to make the app a fun gaming app that will be an aid to the youth. Love Your Nuts has partnered with The Centre for Community Technologies at Nelson Mandela University to develop the prototype. The hope is that the app will:
- Teach students where they can find help if diagnosed with cancer.
- How to support a family member or friend diagnosed with cancer.
- How a healthy lifestyle will lower my risk of getting cancer.
- How early detection increases the chance of surviving cancer.
- What to do in their community to educate and raise awareness.
In need of R400 000 to begin phase one of the project, Love Your Nuts has launched a crowdfunding campaign on BackaBuddy. This will enable the app to reach remote areas in South Africa where information and medical resources are lacking.
“Funds raised will be used to develop a functional prototype that can help us secure support from larger investors, get legal advice to protect the rights of the children who will be using our app, consult with medical experts to revise the cancer information and to keep it up to date and cover the cost of testing and further development”
Early detection and awareness are the main goals of the app. In the long run, this will not only empower the youth but have a positive knock-on effect for the South African government as well.
Torsten speaks about the importance of early detection:
“With today’s technology, we can educate individuals about the significance of early detection of cancer:
- It’s less pain and trauma for the patient.
- It’s less of a financial burden for the patient (the majority of South Africans don’t have medical aid),
- Bed occupancy in hospitals is shorter, which cuts costs for the government.
- Treatment is shorter and a cost-saver for medical aid and government
- If cancer is detected very early, in some cases, no treatment (chemo, etc.) is needed”
You can find out more about Love Your Nuts via the website or Facebook page. Or you can support the crowdfund here.
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