As its first mission, the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project is working in collaboration with Oprah's Angel Network to provide lead funding to create a mobile health and computer unit designed to improve the health and social development of youth in Umkhanyakude District in South Africa.

The mobile health clinic was officially launched on November 8, 2007 at a school assembly attended by local dignitaries, representatives from Oprah's Angel Network and Ms. Theron.

Approximately 3,000 students at four high schools now receive at least one scheduled visit per year with a nurse, attend a one-hour session with an HIV counselor, complete a minimum of 4 90-minute computer training sessions, and go through 4 ninety-minute workshops on health education, with a special focus on preventing HIV. The unit visits each school — Nkosana, Silethukukhanya, Madwaleni and Nhliziyo — for one week each month.

Unfortunately, Umkhanyakude and South Africa have one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world. Adolescents growing up in Umkhanyakude have close to a 50% chance of contracting HIV during their lifetime.. Ten percent percent of female high-school students are infected with HIV by the time they graduate and many more will contract other sexually transmitted infections; twenty-five percent will be pregnant.

Despite the prevalence of HIV, adolescents receive little education on strategies to avoid becoming infected with HIV, how to live with HIV if infected, and how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Along with HIV come very high rates of infection with tuberculosis, including multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis. Because of limited access to clean water, Umkhanyakude still suffers periodic outbreaks of cholera and other waterborne diseases, including schistosomiasis - a debilitating parasitic infection. This new mobile health and computer unit reaches some of the most vulnerable children and youth in South Africa.

The mobile health and computer clinic is owned and operated by Mpilonhle, a community-based, non-governmental charitable organization that brings life-saving services directly to schools in the rural KwaZulu-Natal province.