While most Paly students basked in the Californian sun unaware of the struggle millions of Africans faced with the AIDS epidemic, Stanford students Lauren Young, Katie Bollbach and Jonny Dorsey, in the summer of 2005, journeyed to the far plains of Zambia, one of the top fifteen countries severely affected by AIDS, to work in a refugee camp in Mwange.
Influenced by the harsh realities of the disease and the people they met in Mwange, the trio started a new anti-AIDS organization — FACE AIDS.
Last week Young and Dorsey visited Paly to encourage students to help in their campaign by raising awareness about AIDS and by fundraising for their program.
"[Our goal] is to mobilize and inspire students to fight AIDS in Africa," Dorsey said.
According to Young, they have been successful in getting students involved with the FACE AIDS program at Paly. Junior Elizabeth Horen is the point person to organize a FACE AIDS campaign at Paly for next year. Her objective is to "spread awareness and get people involved," Young said.
"Next year I hope to tie the campaign into the Paly World Festival with penny wars to get people interested. We’ll also sell [AIDS awareness] pins made through FACE AIDS."
Horen said.
Horen is optimistic for next year, but is worried that people will forget over the summer. "However, having Jonny and Lauren come back and talk again next year will help get people excited about getting involved. With their help, people will be re-energized and enthusiastic next fall."
FACE AIDS is the brainchild of Dorsey, Young and Bollbach’s work in Mwange. The three students volunteered through the Facilitating Opportunities in Refugee Growth and Empowerment (FORGE) program. They stayed in Zambia throughout July and August of 2005.Their experiences there motivated them to help in the fight against AIDS.
"It’s tough to be in Africa and not be moved by what AIDS is doing to the continent," Bollbach said.
In Mwange, the leadership and inspirational stories of the refugees struck the students.
"Pastor Berphin Paluku was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and also one of the most humble," Young said. "He had a horrible story of being persecuted because he was a minority in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His mother was killed. Even though he was hit with the most terrible things, he came out of it an incredible, loving, respectful individual, who wanted to do good for his community."
Through FORGE, the students worked with the community members of Mwange to help promote AIDS treatment and prevention.
"We created groups for people living with AIDS to be able to come together to talk about their problems and about how to make money," Bollbach said.
"Honestly, after getting to know people in Mwange and viewing first hand just how beautiful, funny and intelligent all of the people there are, I didn’t really have a choice [but to help in the fight against AIDS]," Young said. "I realized really quickly the rest of my life was going to revolve around development in Africa."
The FACE AIDS program was inspired by one of the people they met in Mwange, Mama Katele—"the one openly [HIV] positive woman in the refugee camp," Bollbach said. "After seeing the burdens Mama Katele had and what she had to go through, and after realizing that there are so many women like her suffering from the same problems but in silence because the stigma is so high in Zambia right now, [I knew I wanted] to continue work in Africa."
With Katele’s help, Bollbach, Young, and Dorsey started an income generating project for the people in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before their program went into effect, the average income of an individual in Zambia was about 70 cents per day, according to Dorsey.
"Participants are not all HIV-positive — some have adopted AIDS orphans or were orphaned themselves as children — but they all meet together to provide emotional support, spread awareness about HIV in their communities, and earn an income making [AIDS awareness] pins," Young said.
Katele, working with Dorsey, Bollbach and Young, managed to raise the rate of people open publicly about being HIV-positive and accepting treatment from five people per month to 50 people per month.
"There were a couple different programs that have run in the past year that have made an impact on the voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) rate in Mwange," Young said.
"Our educational campaign with Mama Katele and the peer educators reached a couple hundred people. Second, the support groups that Katie has been facilitating for the past year has shown people that you can have HIV and lead a happy, healthy life."
Unfortunately, Mama Katele passed away before she could see the benefits of her help. In her honor, the trio made her the "face" of FACE AIDS.
We wanted "to put a human face on the AIDS epidemic," Dorsey said.
Fortunately for the students, they were not alone in wanting to help fight the AIDS epidemic. They joined with an anti-AIDS organization called Partners in Health, which Paul Farmer, Thomas J. White, and Todd McCormack founded in 1989. Currently, FACE AIDS helps fundraise for Partners in Health to support heir program in Africa.
"The fundraising [we do for Partners in Health] is based on selling [AIDS awareness] pins, but we supplement the money by setting up matching funds from alumni of a college or local corporations’ contributions. "Young said. "We’ve raised $30,000 so far."
FACE AIDS’ partnership with Partners in Health is extremely valuable, according to Young. "Anyone who’s interested in AIDS, idolizes Paul Farmer. He is the anti-AIDS hero [for his work in Africa]," Young said.
FACE AIDS also has a policy that for every $5 donated by a student, $15 goes towards the cause.
FACE AIDS recently acquired a new, more strategic partnership with the Clinton Foundation, according to Young. The Clinton Foundation gives them advice and funds the same clinics in Africa and also Partners in Health. The Clinton Foundation in turn supplements FACE AIDS’ presentations with various speakers from the Clinton Foundation to help promote publicity.
The US government also supports the anti-AIDS work in Africa by these campaign companies. President George Bush, according to Young, donated some $15 billion in his President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). PEPFAR is an initiative Bush created in 2003, when the United Nations started the global anti-AIDS movement.
"PEPFAR gave money towards prevention and education. It was distributed in 15 of the countries hardest hit by AIDS [in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean]," Young said.
Despite this "fantastic huge gesture against AIDS, it’s [the money] not being spent in the best of ways," Young said.
According to Young, the bulk of the funds are not being spent towards treatment, which is really where the money needs to go.
"The money also hasn’t been distributed at the rate it was promised. Congress voted to give $300 million of the original $600 million to $5 billion they were supposed to give Africa," Young said.
While all three students might wish for more funds to go to Zambia, the money donated has made a difference.
"The United Nations and the Zambian government recently opened up a treatment program to HIV-positive refugees," Young said. "Now people are getting tested because they know they can get medicine if they are found to be positive. Testing rates have since gone up."
Bollbach, Dorsey and Young meanwhile work in the US to raise awareness of the AIDS epidemic through their one-year-old FACE AIDS organization. They hope to promote the organization in schools across the US, getting as many students involved as possible.
"I want to encourage a greater global conscience," Bollbach said. "I don’t want to shame or guilt people into helping, but encourage them to think about these people [suffering from AIDS] as regular people who just had a case of bad luck."
With the hard work of Bollbach, Dorsey, Young and students across the US, "the next 25 years will hopefully be a lot less hampered by AIDS," Young said.