Silver Ring Thing (SRT), a Christian sexual abstinence ministry, announced on 8th September its coming plan to start an initiative in South Africa. Denny Pattyn, founder of the SRT, is in South Africa this week preparing to launch the program in early 2005.

Based in Pittsburgh, USA, the SRT has gained victory across the United States since its establishment in 2000. 45 U.S. cities have brought the SRT program to their community, over 40,000 teenagers have put on the Silver Ring and signed an abstinence pledge. Currently, the SRT will move to the world’s most troubled country on AIDS issue - South Africa.

The SRT will partner with “Turn the Tide”, aiming to put one million rings on one million South African teenagers in the next three years. “Turn the Tide” is an organisation that is involved with HIV/AIDS prevention in Africa.

The SRT ministry is featured by awesome lighting and video systems, hilarious skits, concert sound systems, high-energy music, TV’s, computers, and a faith-based abstinence message. In this way, young people become more interested in the message being offered to them. After completing a two-hour programme, the youngster will receive a silver ring and sign an abstinence vow.

On 25 June - 4 July, the SRT crew toured the United Kingdom. The crew put on six shows in Manchester, Dublin, Belfast, Glasgow, Birmingham and Claygate. They reached more than a thousand young people, 70 percent of the teens put on silver rings. The Daily Mail in London called the program “revolutionary.”

Detailed information about the South Africa initiative of the SRT will be available at a later date.