By: Morgana Wingard Life happens here. 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 — 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 [...]
We spend billions of dollars during the holidays to show others that we love them. However, the majority of what we buy in department stores, discount stores, and online is tainted with exploited labor. Men, women, and children are forced, beaten, and chained to make the things that give us momentary pleasure. This Christmas can be different. Raven + Lily Is [...]
By: Katie Radford Where do your clothes come from? Do you know who made them? More often than not, we look at the aesthetics of the clothing to tell a story about ourselves and don’t consider the story of the actual piece. For the past fifteen months, I have worked with a fashion organization called Of Rags, which is changing how [...]
Written by Abdoulaye Bah Translated by: Lova Rakotomalala Lack of access to care for HIV positive people has been well documented on the African continent. Many initiatives strive to show that things could improve with collective effort, and among them is the Drug Resource Enhancement against AIDS and Malnutrition (DREAM) program. DREAM was created in 2002 by the Sant’Egidio Community in Mozambique, and takes a comprehensive approach to [...]
By: J. Branson. Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Of Rags: Sustainable Fashion Walking down Broadway in New York City where I live, the ads plastered on the plate glass windows of low cost retailers make it clear that Back to School is for many students a time of shopping to get up to date with the most recent trends for the coming [...]
By: Elizabeth Stoltz Burundi is an east African country bordered by Rwanda, the DRC, and Tanzania. Since 1994, over a decade before civil war ravaged the nation, Concern has worked in Burundi providing health, education, and livelihood support. As millions of students in America head back to school this September, we take a look at education in Burundi! In Burundi, schooling [...]
By: Melissa Bean Part of me always hoped that the world wasn’t based on luck. I always suspected it was, but really hoped it wasn’t. I didn’t want the world to be ruled by arbitrary happenstance. But as I got older, I realized that I couldn’t believe that the world wasn’t simply dictated by luck if I wanted to believe that [...]
-How was The Sound of Hope birthed? And what is so pleasing leading it? In 2007, I went to Africa for the first time. I spent two and a half weeks in the tiny country of Swaziland, which is located in Southern Africa. This country is only about the size of New Jersey, with a population of less than 1 [...]
By: Doreen Panzarella I became interested in community development and building relationships within and between communities since I began volunteering at my local hospital at the age of fourteen. It was my passion for connecting with others and the stories shared that inspired me to pursue medicine and public health. This passion also led me to Ghana in the Summer [...]
African Women, HIV and Marriage By: Fungai Neni It’s a question many young women have to ask themselves these days, given the prevailing environment of multiple sexual partnerships, and their consequences for the transmission of HIV and other sexual infections. To wed or not to wed: that is the questionWhen, if at all, is the right time to get married? [...]
