Educational Materials

Learn more and help teach others about the causes and consequences of HIV/AIDS through a series of handouts that we've put together!

Dr. Paul Farmer on FACE AIDS

Why Partners In Health?

FACE AIDS works in collaboration with Partners In Health in Rwanda, and our student campaigns in the United States raise funds to support their clinics. Partners In Health is a global leader in the fight for bringing quality medical care and social services to the poorest regions of the world. Its commitment to social justice, human rights, and global solidarity make it an inspiration for our movement. Our grants to Partners In Health are used to train community health workers, establish new clinics, and implement a model for comprehensive health care that supports our pinmakers and their communities throughout Rwanda. Learn more.

How We're Fighting The Epidemic

Over 118 FACE AIDS chapters throughout the US sell the beaded pins at left for $5 to raise awareness about AIDS in Africa. This money is matched by private donors and sent to Partners In Health, a non-profit organization that provides AIDS treatment and comprehensive health care to patients in Rwanda. Coming full circle, FACE AIDS employs patients of PIH in Rwanda to make the pins, providing them with an income they wouldn't otherwise be able to get.

By funding PIH, FACE AIDS connects students to the most inspirational and effective organization fighting AIDS on the ground and directly helps the pinmakers and their neighbors in Rwanda.

Where We Work

FACE AIDS works with two associations of people living with HIV/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 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.

How It All Got Started

Although today FACE AIDS involves many people from many different walks of life, it all began with one woman. Mama Katele, weighing in at less than 100 pounds and living in the most obscure and under-developed region of Zambia, was an unlikely candidate for the Western attention, but she became the face of AIDS for three American volunteers who spent their summer in the refugee camp where she lived.

Katie Bollbach, Jonny Dorsey, and Lauren Young went to Mama Katele’s refugee camp in the summer of 2005 to work through an organization called FORGE. Since 2004, FORGE has been helping university students from the US and Canada to implement self-designed projects in African refugee camps. Lauren, Jonny, and Katie had all arrived at Mwange with projects in different areas, including literacy, female empowerment, and orphan care.

The three students quickly realized that if you’re working in development in Zambia, you can’t ignore AIDS, and felt compelled to do something about HIV in the camp before they left. After a bit of investigation, they discovered that there were only 40 people in the camp who had tested positive for HIV and that only five people were tested for the disease each month. National statistics suggest that at least 1000 people in Mwange were living with HIV/AIDS. They also met Mama Katele, the only semi-open HIV+ person in the camp of 24,000 refugees, and began to work with her to convince more people to find out their HIV status. Read more...