About this Project

HIV/AIDS is the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time. It's not a gay disease. It's not an African disease. It's a global pandemic that's wiping out entire generations of people one village at a time. It's leaving entire villages of children and grandparents with no parents in between.

HIV/AIDS is an especially complex issue in Africa when you consider the number of related challenges: the taboo nature of discussing it and getting tested for it, the extreme poverty that leads to the trafficking of children to truckers, the lack of education on realistic prevention, and the belief in the medical community itself that the people in villages affected by HIV/AIDS are not worth saving.

This workspace isn't a place to share problems. It's a place to share solutions. What's working best when it comes to reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS globally, and how might that be applied in Africa? What kinds of breakthrough innovation have been demonstrated when it comes to improving the quality of life for those affected?

I invite you to help cultivate this workspace as a resource to keep track of places, projects, examples, resources, research materials and discourses on this issue.

The Challenge

Discovering what works when it comes to empowering people to reduce the risk against HIV/AIDS, and improving the quality of life for people who are affected now to allow them to not only survive but thrive.

Examples of Breakthrough Innovation and Best Practices

1. Bob Bilheimer's "A Closer Walk" documentary and "Walk the Walk" campaign is chocked full of so many good examples of things that work that it's hard to know where to start. Click here to watch a 30 minute edit of the film online.
2. Grassroot Soccer's AIDS education and awareness program for kids at risk is an example of applying real innovation to outreach. Ethan Zohn took his winnings from "Survivor: Africa" and partnered with Dr. Tommy Clark and Kirk Friedrich on a program that's been embraced by Johns Hopkins University, WHO and the Center for Disease Control.
3. Dr. Paul Farmer's work to make anti-retroviral drugs available to villages devastated by the AIDS pandemic continues to extend and improve the quality of lives of people in Haiti, in spite of the lack of support from within his own medical community. Tracy Kidder wrote a biography on Paul called Mountains Beyond Mountains, and Bob Bilheimer profiles Paul in both his letters and in "A Closer Walk" (linked to above).
4. OUTREACH : Mobile Health Clinics to Combat HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa - part of Cameron Sinclair's "Architecture for Humanity" program.

President Clinton called OUTREACH "a remarkable project with great possibility" after architects, designers and medical professionals were challenged to respond to the mounting HIV/AIDS crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa. Design teams were asked to develop schemes for mobile medical unit to provide basic health care as well as HIV/AIDS testing, prevention, treatment and education to under served populations in the region. 531 teams from fifty one countries answered the call and four were selected for further development.In 2004 the four team met in Africa to develop and refine their idea of which two prototypes have been constructed.

More on the project.

Questions and Comments

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