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About Us
Support group members in Zambia earn income making the FACE AIDS pins
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. |
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