For almost a decade, Art for AIDS International has been hosting visual art workshops to educate young people about HIV and to engage them in the global AIDS response. After over 300 workshops with over 10,000 young people in 7 countries, Art for AIDS has begun to feature and sell this powerful body of student art in their new online gallery and shop with all proceeds supporting women and children affected by HIV and AIDS in Africa. [Disclaimer: I am a long-time volunteer, supporter, and board member of Art for AIDS International].

A quick overview of Art for AIDS International

Art for AIDS International was founded in 2001 by two Canadian artists, Hendrikus Bervoets and Rudolf Bikkers. The original concept was to to invite a group of 25 artists to produce a portfolio, entitled Artists International Direct Support, that would be exhibited and sold to raise funds for organisations in Southern Africa that were supporting a growing population of children who had been orphaned as a result of AIDS.

In 2004, the London District Catholic School Board invited Art for AIDS to introduce a number of high schools to the portfolio, and to host art workshops with their students as a novel way to teach them about the impact of HIV and AIDS in their own community and abroad.

Since 2004, Art for AIDS has focused on continuing to engage young people through art in schools across Canada, and increasingly around the world. The artwork produced by students (now consisting of over 10,000 images) is exhibited and sold with funds supporting a growing number of community organisations across Africa supporting women and children affected by AIDS.

Online Gallery and Shop

While this student artwork has been exhibited in schools, galleries, and in festivals around the world, including major exhibits at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, the World Food Programme HQ in Rome, and twice at the Education International World Congress in Berlin and Capetown, this is the first time a large body has been available to view and purchase online.

All the limited-edition prints exhibited online cost $30 Canadian (approx 23 EUR, 18 GBP, 250 ZAR) with proceeds supporting some incredible organisations working in Southern Africa to ease the burden of HIV and AIDS in the region.

Please visit the gallery at: http://www.artforaidsinternational.org/shop/ and tell your friends.

Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian writer and one of Africa’s leading contemporary literary voices

Its not new news that young people and women are two groups that face tremendous obstacles in many communities.  For young women, these obstacles are often compounded, despite widespread recognition that empowering this group can lead to substantial improvements in health, education, and economic growth.

In 2003, then Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan wrote that “for decades, we have known that the best way for Africa to thrive is to ensure that its women have the freedom, power and knowledge to make decisions affecting their own lives and those of their families and communities”. He later said that “there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women.”

Based on my own experiences over the past few years, I can with confidence echo this sentiment. I was quite appreciative, therefore, when I came across an article during this morning’s news-reading on Forbes.com highlighting The 20 Youngest Power Women in Africa.  All under the age of 45, these 20 women are at the forefront of business, governance, innovation, and culture in Africa right now. And, even though I cannot speak to all of their accomplishments directly, or even agree with some of their perspectives, it seemed a list well worth sharing.

Forbes lists The 20 Youngest Power Women In Africa

• Ory Okolloh – Kenyan. Founder, Ushahidi
• Chimamanda Adichie – Nigerian. Writer
• Yolanda Cuba – South African. Corporate Executive
• Ndidi Nwuneli – Nigerian. Social Entrepreneur
• Dambisa Moyo – Zambian. Economist
• Khanyi Dhlomo – South African. Media Mogul
• Phuti Malabie – South African. CEO, Shanduka Group
• Funmi Iyanda – Nigerian. Journalist & Broadcaster
• Isis Nyongo – Kenyan. Managing Director, InMobi Africa
• Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu – Ethiopian. Entrepreneur
• Elsie Kanza – Tanzania. Economic Advisor To Tanzania’s President
• Saran Kaba Jones – Liberian. Founder, Face Africa
• Julie Gichuru – Kenyan. Journalist & Broadcaster
• Lisa Kropman – South African, Entrepreneur
• Stella Kilonzo – Kenyan. Chief Executive, Capital Markets Authority, Kenya
• Magatte Wade – Senegal. Entrepreneur
• Jonitha Gugu Msibi – South Africa. Senior Partner, Ernst & Young
• June Arunga – Kenyan. Entrepreneur
• Juliet Ehimuan – Nigerian. Google country manager, Nigeria
• Olga Kimani-Arara – Kenyan. Google Country Manager, Kenya

For a more details and photos, check out the original article by Mfonobong Nsehe: The 20 Youngest Power Women in Africa

Since this list is by no means exhaustive, feel free to leave suggestions in the comment section below.

Recently I finalized a new infographic for North Star Alliance highlighting data from their network of Roadside Wellness Centres in East Africa. I designed this graphic to help better illustrate how the network works, and how successful North Star Alliance has been to date with regard to providing healthcare to mobile populations like truck drivers, and the communities with which they interact. In the interest of sharing their incredible story, I thought I would re-post the graphic and article here as well. To learn more about North Star Alliance, visit their website or check them out on Facebook!

Imagine being ‘at work’, 24 hours a day, 26 days each month. While this thought would bring even the most enthusiastic workaholics to their knees, this is, in fact, a reality for truck drivers and transport workers across Africa and around the world. Couple this reality with limited access to health care and near constant mobility and the results prove devastating. Without proper access to quality health care, curable illness goes untreated and infectious diseases are able to spread across enormous distances. The result: the health of transport communities suffer, their direct and indirect contacts suffer, and businesses, that depend on a safe and healthy supply-chains, suffer.

To read the rest of the article visit North Star Alliance’s post: East Africa – Health Care that Moves [Infographic]

On 26-29 July, North Star Alliance teamed up with Art for AIDS International to pilot a series of innovative visual-arts-based HIV workshops with truck drivers and sex workers in the community of Beitbridge, Zimbabwe.

These workshops, led by Art for AIDS International Executive Director Hendrikus Bervoets, use a combination of fact-based knowledge sharing, experiential learning, peer-peer support, and art making to explore specific and sensitive aspects of risk and vulnerability, especially as they relate to HIV and STI infection.

“Although HIV awareness is high, fear and stigma prevent many from getting tested and seeking treatment. These innovative workshops show that the process of combining health information, storytelling and art-making can be informative, therapeutic and fun for everyone involved” says Robin Landis, Director of Communications for North Star Alliance.

What is perhaps most exciting about these workshops, however, is the resulting body of artwork.

During the workshops participants translate their insights into the production of original collage artwork. Each collage is produced as original machine-made limited edition prints that are signed and numbered.

These prints will create a unique portfolio which will be collaboratively exhibited by North Star Alliance and Art for AIDS International to raise awareness about the impact of HIV on mobile populations, and proceeds to support both organisations’ work in Southern Africa.  The portfolio will be officially released early this fall, so you’ll have to wait until then to see it!

The workshops also provided North Star with an opportunity to collect mixed-method research on these key populations. “By interacting with truck drivers and sex workers outside of the clinic setting we were able to deepen our understanding of their health needs and tackle sensitive issues like HIV stigma” says Robin Landis.

North Star will use the participants’ feedback and in-depth interviews to improve our targeted services and programmes.

Stay tuned for updates from this project, including information on exhibition openings by subscribing to North Star Alliance’s RSS Feed or by following our blog. If you are interested in ordering prints or hosting an exhibit, please contact jean-paul@northstar-alliance.org.

About Art for AIDS International

Art for AIDS International is a Canadian based not-for-profit organisation dedicated to raising funds and awareness for women and children affected by the HIV in Africa. Since 2004, Art for AIDS International has hosted over 300 workshops with over ten thousand participants in 7 countries.

You can learn more about Art for AIDS by visiting them online or by joining them on Facebook.

About North Star Alliance

North Star works at the crossroads of disease and mobility to ensure that highly-mobile populations, especially truck drivers and their direct and indirect contacts have access to basic health services.

You can learn more about North Star Alliance by visiting them online or by joining them on Facebook.

While I was unable to attend the summit, I was honored to be asked by the conference organizers if I would be willing to design an infographic for the conference, and as a visual aid for a new call to action that would be unveiled on the closing day of the conference. This call to action is focused on securing resources and funding to support new youth leadership for a sustainable HIV response; protecting and promoting human rights to eliminate stigma and discrimination from legal frameworks; and on delivering HIV information and services that meet the diverse needs of young people including key populations.

Since the conference, I’ve been excitedly watching as AIDS organizations, youth organizations, art organizations, and even a major condom brand, have commented on and shared this graphic with their followers on Facebook and Twitter. Today it dawned on me I haven’t even shared it with the friends and family I have following this blog. As such, here it is! If you like it, please consider adding your name to the Call to Action.

Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think of the infographic or the data it presents.

10 Development Blogs Worth Reading:

Chris Blattman
Assistant Professor of Political Science & Economics at Yale.

From Poverty to Power
by Duncan Green, Head of Research for Oxfam GB and author of ‘From Poverty to Power’.

AID Thoughts
Aid Thoughts is a blog about International Development, Economics, and Foreign Aid

Blood and Milk
Covers a range of interdisciplinary topics and their relation to development practice

Good Intentions are Not Enough
Good Intentions’ mission is to provide donors with the knowledge and tools they need to make informed funding decisions.

Tales from the Hood
“Tales From the Hood” is a collection of more or less real-time stories, reflection and opinion about life inside the humanitarian aid industry… from some of the worst neighborhoods in the global village.

Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like
This (hilarious/honest) site is based on the concept of the famous ‘Stuff White People Like’

Shotgun Shack
On this blog the author write about “internal conflicts, life, growing up, and traveling the strange and winding roads that led me where I am today. There’s also a fair share of raving, ranting, raging and reality checking around INGO work.”

Owen Abroad
by Owen Barder, Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington DC, and the Director of aidinfo – a programme of Development Initiatives which aims to make aid more transparent and accountable. He lives and works in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Pambazuka News
While this is technically not a personal blog, it is a great blog-format news site featuring articles produced by a pan-African community of some 2,600 citizens and organisations who together produce insightful articles about social justice in Africa.

Please leave a comment if you would like to suggest any other good development-related blogs (including your own!) to share with other readers!

Culture and Development Reading List

• Culture and Development: A Critical Introduction – Susanne Schech, Jane Haggis
• Culture and Public Action - Anthology Edited by Vijayendra Rao, Michael Walton
• Culture and Development in a Globalizing World: Geographies, Actors and Paradigms - Edited by Sarah Radcliffe
• Culture and Global Change - Anthology edited by Tracy Skelton and Tim Allen
• Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World’s Frontlines - William Cleveland
• New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development - Arlene Goldbard
• Third World Quarterly Issue 31 ,Vol. 4: Relocating Culture in Development and Development in Culture (can be accessed for free via library subscription)
• Development as Freedom - Amartya Sen
• Doctrines Of Development - M. P. Cowen & R.W. Shenton

Check back in the new year for reviews of Art and Upheaval, and New Creative Community. If those aren’t enough readings, however, check out my list of Essential Books about HIV and AIDS or feel free to leave a comment.

© 2010 Zapiro (All rights reserved): Printed with permission from www.zapiro.com

It seems freedom of expression is anything but free.  This week South African President Jacob Zuma has gone on a suing spree, filing what is now his eleventh defamation suit against members of the media.  The spree began earlier this week when Zuma took on cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro (known as Zapiro) for a controversial cartoon published in the Sunday times over two years ago that depicted Zuma preparing to rape a woman wearing the garb of Lady Justice.  Similar suits have also been filed against Mondli Makhanya, former editor of the weekly Sunday Times and the owners Avusa Media for deciding to publish the controversial cartoon, each worth over 5 million rand.

Zapiro has said that he stands by his decision to draw the cartoon, which was published after the 2005 trial when Zuma was acquitted of rape charges.  During the trial, however, Zuma admitted to having unprotected sex with his accuser but claimed that he took a shower afterwards to cut the risk of contracting HIV.

The South African National Editors’ Forum has since stated that it is concerned by the flurry of defamation actions, several of which are directed against Zapiro and publications that carry his cartoons, saying they were having an “intimidatory” effect. The forum has noted that the content of the cartoon had been debated by the Human Rights Commission, which exonerated the paper and Zapiro, stating that the issues raised by the cartoon were in the public domain.

Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg…

Today, Zuma launched a second series of lawsuits against  Media24 and Tim du Plessis for a photograph published in 2007 which shows him at a barbecue with popular Afrikaans singer Steve Hofmeyr and filmmaker Leon Schuster entitled “Picnic with Dingaan.”  Zuma alleges that the picture defamed him by comparing him to Dingaan, a 19th century Zulu warrior leader who is reputed to have pretended to be a friend of the Afrikaans settlers while he was actually planning war against them.

What’s the angle?

From a North American perspective, it is difficult to imagine the head of state taking on core values like free speech and freedom of the press (especially when there are so many people controlling our media from behind closed doors…but thats another story). One must wonder, therefore, what motivation Zuma has for suing…well, everyone.  Surely with the public coffers in his back pocket he can’t need the money? I mean, he has a multitude of mansions, three wives, a parking lot for some 40 cars, and he’s already slipped through the justice system by escaping rape and corruption charges… isn’t Zuma living the dream?

To be honest, while I am no legal expert, I can’t see any reason for Zuma to take the low and dirty road on this one. All it’s made me do is recount all the stories these cartoons and publications attempt to highlight, and whats more, share them with all of you on this blog.  If Zuma wants to repair his broken image he should get to work attempting to solve some of the socio-economic issues currently crippling the majority of the South African population: HIV/AIDS, poverty, environmental degradation, gross gender inequality, an epidemic of crime and violence, government corruption… Mr. Zuma, take your pick.  No one is impressed by your lawsuits against Zapiro, radio station 94, 7 Highveld Stereo, the Sunday Independent, the Sunday World , the Citizen and the four separate suits you’ve filed against the Star.

To view some humorous renditions of Zuma, check out my post on Zapiro’s famous Puppetshow ZA News.

To highlight the essential role of this medium, a new exhibit featuring 153 AIDS awareness posters has recently opened at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.  This exhibit, entitled Graphic Intervention: 25 Years of AIDS Awareness Posters, 1985-2010, features unique works of art drawing on local language, culture, and design that espouse a universally applicable message about a need to acknowledge, discuss, and prevent the spread of HIV.

You can view 153 of the posters included in the exhibition at MCAD’s interactive site.

Graphic Intervention: 25 Years of AIDS Awareness Posters 1985-2010 runs at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design from September 13 to December 4, 2010.

Thanks to theActivistWriter.com for bringing this exhibit to my attention.  Please check out their article on this exhibit as well!  To learn more about a recent initiative using multi-media to address HIV/AIDS check out our article on UNAIDS #PreventionRevolution or to see more articles on art and activism visit: 5 Great Sites that explore Art, Activism, and Politics.

In the 1970′s and 1980′s ‘Development’ was widely viewed as an issue of economic growth.  As a result, it was generally accepted that countries with a high GDP/GNI were developed countries and that those on the other side of the spectrum could be ‘developed’ by promoting economic growth and market liberalization.

In the late 1980′s, however, it was clear to a select few that economic indicators like the GDP, GNP, and GNI alone were insufficient to adequately  illustrate changes in human progress and development.  To address this substantial gap, economist Mahbub ul Haq devised a new set of indices called the Human Development Index which had the explicit purpose of  ”shift[ing] the focus of development economics from national income accounting to people centered policies” (Haq 1995). Working collaboratively with a high profile group of economists, including Paul Streeten, Frances Stewart, Gustav Ranis, and perhaps most importantly, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, Haq compiled the first UNDP Human Development Report published in 1990.  This new index broadened significantly the scope of the development sector, and placed health and education alongside gross national income as the three fundamental pillars of human development.

For the past 20 years, the concept Human Development, alongside Sen’s concept of capability, has been one of the most significant frames through which development practitioners, policy makers, and academics have viewed development.  As a result, health, education, and economic growth are at the center of most development projects and interventions.  Over the past few years, however, one group has been asking a question that extends, in a fairly radical way, the lens through which we view progress:  What if Development was measured by happiness?

While concepts like Gross National Happiness and Happiness economics are already a few decades old, the New Economics Foundation has been promoting an index since 2006 called the Happy Planet Index (HPI) that measures happiness and sustainable development.  This past July one of the key statisticians responsible for promoting the HPI presented at TED.  While I could break down the HPI in this post, there is little use competing with TED or the presenter Nic Marks. Instead, smile, take a look at the video, and feel free to leave a comment below with your impression of the HPI.

“Nic Marks: The Happy Planet Index | Video on TED.com.” TED: Ideas worth Spreading. Aug. 2010. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. <http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_index.html>.

Haq, Mahbub ul. 1995. Reflections on Human Development. New York: Oxford University Press.