FACE AIDS

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FACE AIDS is a student organization which raises money and awareness about AIDS in Africa. Through the sale of beaded AIDS ribbon pins, made by individuals living with HIV and AIDS in Zambia, FACE AIDS chapters on college campuses across the country strive to increase understanding of the disease by putting a human face to the epidemic. All revenue from the pins goes directly to Partners In Health in Rwanda.

FACE AIDS was started by three Stanford University students after they spent a summer working in a refugee camp in northern Zambia.

Contents 1 About FACE AIDS 2 FACE AIDS In Zambia 3 FACE AIDS In Rwanda 4 Partnership with Partners in Health 5 FACE AIDS Chapters 6 External links

[edit] About FACE AIDS

What We Believe: FACE AIDS is driven by a belief in a simple fact: AIDS is a preventable and treatable disease. Yet in 2007 more than two million people died from AIDS, the majority of whom lived in southern Africa. AIDS continues to destroy lives, tear apart families, and stifle entire societies who do not have access to resources, medicines, and information they need to fight the disease. We believe that with a broad-based social commitment we have the ability to address this tragedy and to close the gap between what we are capable of accomplishing medically, and what we have thus far accomplished socially.

What We Do: To build this broad-based commitment, we engage young people by connecting them with individuals affected by the pandemic, and with opportunities that exist to fight it. For many young people in the U.S., AIDS is a huge, scary, anonymous problem. News stories focus on huge scientific challenges, on policy failings, and on millions of deaths and orphans. But young people need also to know that these lives do not need to be lost, and that where there are tragedies there are also solutions. They need to know that AIDS medications that can extend healthy lives for decades cost only $140 a year for adults, and $60 for children. They need to know that transmission of HIV from a mother to her newborn child can be prevented. They need to know that innovative responses to AIDS are being developed every day, and that they can play a role in the fight.

How We Do It: FACE AIDS spreads this message to future leaders through our college and high school chapters across the United States. FACE AIDS campus campaigns center around the distribution of AIDS Awareness Pins made by men and women affected by AIDS who work in income generating support groups, previously in Zambia, and now in rural Rwanda. When students receive the pins they learn the name, picture, and story of the individual pin-maker. They learn about the hopes and dreams of the man or woman living with AIDS, or caring for a child with AIDS. They learn about the daily challenges he or she faces, and the courage it takes to overcome illness and stigma. The pins also facilitate grassroots fundraising that transform young people from passive observers to active supporters in the fight against AIDS. All money raised by FACE AIDS chapters is paired up with matching grants from private donors and given to support Partners In Health's clinics in Rwanda. Partners In Health is widely recognized as a model organization treating AIDS and providing comprehensive health care in poor countries.

[edit] FACE AIDS In Zambia

There are currently 25 million people in sub-Saharan Africa living with HIV/AIDS, but it is difficult to imagine that many millions of people as individuals. In 2005-6 FACE AIDS helped to create 4 support groups for Africans affected by AIDS in Mwange and Meheba refugee camps in Zambia and paid their members to make the beaded pins we use in our campaigns. FACE AIDS also partnered with 2 existing Zambian support groups in Mporokoso and Solwezi, towns which neighbor the refugee camps.

Support group members do not have to be HIV-positive. Some have taken in AIDS orphans, some have lost a close friend or relative to the disease, and some are in fact infected. All are taking a stand against the epidemic by joining the group despite the strong stigma associated with HIV/AIDS.

These thirty people are the faces of AIDS in Africa. Each represents almost a million other silent Africans affected by AIDS. Meet the individuals-meet your responsibility to change the future.

[edit] FACE AIDS In Rwanda

FACE AIDS works with two associations of people living with HIV and AIDS in Eastern Rwanda. Some association members are HIV-positive, others care for an HIV-positive family member or an AIDS orphan. Almost all association members are subsistence farmers or agricultural day laborers living below the poverty line, with no access to electricity or clean running water.

FACE AIDS is employing the 91 members of these associations to make beaded AIDS awareness pins that we use in our education and fundraising campaigns in the US. The associations make the pins for 6 months, saving some of their income from the project into a group savings account. At the end of 6 months, FACE AIDS provides small-business training and advising and helps the associations transition into more sustainable income-generating activities.

Association members use their incomes from the FACE AIDS project to buy food for their families, school supplies and uniforms for their children and other essential items.

All of the funds raised from FACE AIDS pin sales in the US are donated to Partners in Health in Rwanda, which provides comprehensive healthcare, including HIV treatment, to pin-making association members, as well as almost 500,000 other Rwandans.

[edit] Partnership with Partners in Health

What is Partners in Health? PIH is a non-profit organization founded by Dr. Paul Farmer and Dr. Jim Yong Kim that works to avert the millions of preventable deaths that occur in the developing world each year. Partners in Health is committed to ensuring that poverty stricken individuals are not denied health care because of an inability to pay, and works with local governments and other non-profit agencies to guarantee access to lifesaving treatments.

Since it first established its community-based approach to HIV treatment in 1987, PIH has revolutionized the treatment of infectious diseases in resource-poor settings. The PIH treatment model rejects the notion that it is not cost-effective to provide high-quality medical care to patients in the developing world, and their documented successes in South America, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe reinforce the validity of this belief. Relying on a combination of education, social services and cutting-edge medicine, PIH's clinics have been repeatedly shown to offer higher cure rates for diseases like multidrug-resistant tuberculosis than are seen in US hospitals. Internationally recognized as one of the most innovative and effective healthcare providers in the world, Partners in Health is continuously expanding the scope of its programs, improving the lives of millions of impoverished individuals worldwide.

Fundamental Principles of PIH "The work of PIH has three goals: to care for our patients, to alleviate the root causes of disease in their communities, and to share lessons learned around the world. Through long-term partnerships with our sister organizations, we bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need and work to alleviate the crushing economic and social burdens of poverty that exacerbate disease. PIH believes that health is a fundamental right, not a privilege. Through service, training, advocacy, and research, we seek to raise the standard of care for the poor everywhere."

Partners in Health operates based on five fundamental principles that are applied to every PIH treatment site. The five principles are:

   * Access to primary health care
   * Free health care and education for the poor
   * Community partnerships
   * Addressing basic social and economic needs
   * Serving the poor through the public sector 

Using these five principles as the foundation for their work, PIH has succeeded in accomplishing their goals in a diverse array of locations.

[edit] FACE AIDS Chapters

West Coast Pomona College Claremont McKenna College Scripps College Harvey Mudd College Pitzer College Pacific Union College Stanford University University of San Diego University of California, Berkeley University of California, Los Angeles University of California, Santa Barbara De Anza College Santa Clara University University of California, San Diego Palo Alto HS Menlo Castilleja HS Loyola Marymount University San Diego State University University of Southern California City College of San Francisco Portola Valley School District Seattle University Gonzaga University University of British Columbia University of Oregon Western Oregon University Whitman College South Salem High School University of Washington Woodside High School Saratoga High School Dana Hills High School Mountain View Patrick Henry High School San Francisco University High School

Southwest

University of Arizona University of Texas- Austin Trinity University Arizona State University Texas Tech HSC University of Houston Central HS

Southeast Tulane University University of Alabama Duke University North Carolina A&T State University of North Carolina- Charlotte Wake Forest University Vanderbilt University University of South Florida Elon University

Northeast

Harvard University Boston College Boston University Bowdoin University MIT University of Massachusetts- Amherst Williams College Amherst College Phillips Academy Andover Brown University Northeastern Bates Colby College Tufts College Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences Wellesley University of Maine Mount Holyoke Bryant University Dartmouth College Middlebury College Fairfield University University of Vermont Western Michigan Yale University of Connecticut Wesleyan University Housatonic Valley Regional High School Dwight Englewood School Mt. Morris Central HS Shoreham Wading River HS SUNY Buffalo Buckingham Browne and Nichols School

Midwest

University of Missouri- Kansas City Washington University University of Iowa Emporia State University University of Missouri University of Kansas North Dakota State University Iowa State University University of Dubuque Hinsdale Central HS Whitney M. Young Magnet HS University of Wyoming Cranbrook School Walnut Hills High School Columbia College Chicago George Washington High School Kansas State University

Mid-Atlantic

New York University SUNY- Stony Brook Princeton University Franklin and Marshall College Pennsylvania State University University of Pennsylvania Villanova University SUNY Geneseo Cornell Columbia Carnegie Mellon Friends Academy (HS) Haverford University University of Delaware George Washington University University of Maryland- College Park University of Maryland- Baltimore County University of Virginia Virginia Commonwealth University Georgetown Eastern Mennonite HS Great Valley HS Vassar College Massapequa High School New Rochelle High School

International Marymount Academy

Great Lakes Ohio HS University of Minnesota- Twin Cities Northwestern University Macalaster College University of Wisconsin- Madison Carleton College Bradley University DePaul University University of Illinois- Urbana-Champaign Ohio State University Otterbein College Case Western Reserve University University of Dayton University of Michigan University of Notre Dame Bowling Green State University Michigan State University Calvin college Butler University Miami University Grand Valley State University Columbus Academy Saint Francis Medina HS Eden Prairie High School

[edit] External links

• FACE AIDS