Jennifer Wynn of ONE’s policy team reports on a recent event on sports and development at USAID.
Last Friday, USAID held a forum on how sports can be used as a powerful platform for social change and international development. Forum guests included Greg Jennings, Green Bay Packers wide receiver; Dhani Jones, founder of Bowtiecause.org and former NFL linebacker; Phil de Picciotto, founder and President of Octagon Inc.; USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah; and Paul Tagliabue, former NFL commissioner.
The panel discussed the power of sports as a universal language with the power to break down cultural barriers and create responsibility, respect, social integration and empowerment for people across the globe. As Dhani Jones, put it — you can see the power of sports wherever you go and “sports level the playing field –- pun intended.”
Everybody’s favorite February holiday is this week, and we thought we’d jump into the game with our very own Valentine’s Day cards -– but with a twist, of course. We’ve created a very special valentine card that spreads the love and hope for a world where HIV/AIDS no longer exists. Our hearts are going pitter-patter just at the thought.
Click on the image below to download a copy of our card. Then print it out, cut around the dotted line and give it to that special someone… or your favorite ONE member.
And if you’re looking for some special to do over a box of chocolates, head to our virtual AIDS quilt and create your very own love-inspired panel. Nothing says “I love you” quite like lending your voice for the beginning of the end of AIDS, am I right?
ONE member and Peace Corps volunteer Brandon Green will be sharing his experiences in Burkina Faso with ONE Blog readers in the series, “Back to Africa” over the next few months. We look forward to hearing about all his adventures!
Me and my students at our HIV/AIDS talk
At one of my English Clubs — a place for students to practice their English — last Tuesday, 140 7th and 8th graders crammed into a classroom that shouldn’t be able to hold more than a third of them. They were there to learn a few English words and watch the American put a condom on a wooden penis. I was there to teach them about HIV/AIDS. The class started by discussing what HIV/AIDS is and how it affects the human body. Then, I showed them some statistics about people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. I told them that sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of infections, and that 1.2 percent of the population of Burkina Faso is currently living with HIV/AIDS.
Life happens here at the Tema Clinic in Accra, Ghana. Babies trade a death sentence for life. Mothers transform their sickly skeleton figures to healthy, able bodies. Tema offers hope in a place that was once hopeless and ravaged by AIDS.
Funded by the Global Fund through financial support from Product (RED), Tema Hospital cares for 2,200 people living with HIV. We recently visited their facility again –- their work never ceases to amaze me. The Global Fund make it possible for the hospital to provide ARV treatment and PMTCT (prevention of mother-to-child-transmission). Thanks to these interventions, only 4 percent of babies at Tema with HIV-positive mothers are born with the virus.
Last week, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) celebrated the transition of Project HEART to local partners, after eight years of putting hundreds of thousands of patients on life-saving ARV treatment.
Kevin Kouassi, Community HIV Counselor from Dimbokro, Cote d’Ivoire, and Project HEART beneficiary, counsels a young pregnant woman about prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV services. (Photo: Olivier Asselin)
Project HEART was launched in 2004 in partnership with the CDC and PEPFAR to scale up access to HIV prevention, care and treatment services in Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. As of September 2011, Project HEART has enrolled more than 1 million people in HIV care programs (including 80,000 children), provided antiretroviral treatment for more than 560,000 patients, and tested and counseled more than 2.5 million pregnant women.
In celebration of the Global Fund’s 10th anniversary, ONE Global Health Policy Manager Erin Hohlfelder reflects on the organization’s accomplishments over the years.
When I was ten, I was busy doing important things like mastering long division, practicing softball and rocking the plastic glasses/bowl cut combo. While I’m proud of those accomplishments, I have to say I’m even more proud today to honor all the incredible things that the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has achieved in its first ten years of existence. To understand the Global Fund’s impact, it’s important to remember just how bad things were before it existed: Fewer than 50,000 Africans had access to AIDS treatment. Malaria was killing nearly 1 million people annually. Treating TB was considered too expensive for most of the developing world.
Each day this week, we’ll highlight a major accomplishment in the fight against poverty that ONE members helped achieve in 2011. Today, ONE’s US Deputy Director for New Media Garth Moore discusses our World AIDS Day campaign.
Last summer, new scientific studies pointed to a tantalizing possibility: The Beginning of the End of AIDS. What could that have meant? A horrible disease that has taken millions of lives could be on the downhill thanks to advancements and lower costs for treatment and prevention. Suddenly, villages and communities where AIDS was once a death sentence could be kept healthy and avoid getting HIV in the first place through stopping mother-to-child transmission and more preventive methods. When ONE, (RED) and other partners combined forces to push US leaders to scale up treatment and prevention, we recognized this wasn’t a pipe dream, but a serious call to action.
Right now, some of the world's biggest oil companies are fighting to keep some of their deals with foreign governments secret. Let's tell big oil we won't be bullied.
Cuts to poverty-fighting programs won't balance the budget, but they will set back progress on Canada's development priorities and risk jeopardizing existing investments.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
