AIDS is the most disastrous health crisis on the planet. Globally, more than 25 million people have died, and another early 40 million people are infected. Ten thousand people are infected every single day. The story goes even further than the tragic deaths. As Jeffrey Sachs says in The End of Poverty, “Africa is losing its teachers and doctors, its civil servants, and farmers, its mothers and fathers. There are already more than 10 million orphaned children. Business costs have soared, due to disarray from massive medical costs for workers, relentless absenteeism and an avalanche of worker deaths. And millions of households are battling with the illness of the head of household and the incredible toll in time and expense, to say nothing of emotional trauma on the rest of the family.”

Developing new treatments and finding new ways to produce generic drugs will be a central part of addressing the pandemic. We cannot win the war on this disease without new treatments. The biotech industry has a major role to play in fighting AIDS.

However, we are also going to need new doctors to treat patients with these drugs. We need public health professionals to design new prevention strategies. We need investment bankers and other business people to donate to effective organizations. We need good managers to lead nonprofits fighting the pandemic. We need politicians and voters to make this a national issue.

The FACE AIDS team is comprised of people who want to do all of these things. One Hum Bio major wants to work as a doctor in rural Africa. We have an Econ major who want to be a policy analyst working in Washington in DC. One volunteer is a Medieval History major who aspires to be an event planner for The Gates foundation. Despite our varied plans for the future, today we are all working towards one common goal, which we believe is the most effective way we can currently contribute to the fight against AIDS in Africa — building a student movement.

In order to defeat this disease, we need a broad base supporting this fight. As a society, we need to resolve that it is unacceptable for millions of people to die every year from a lack of treatment that costs less than 50 cents a day, and do something about it. FACE AIDS is working to bring about this change.

To do this, we create personal connections between students and individuals affected by AIDS. On college campuses across America, we distribute beaded awareness pins made by cooperatives of Congolese refugees and rural Zambians. Not only does this put a human face on the pandemic for US students, but it provides life changing income for the pin makers in Zambia, and raises money for expansion of medical care in Rwanda through Partners in Health, an extremely effective international health nonprofit. It takes just $4 to prevent transmission of HIV from a mother to a child. $140 is enough to treat a patient with antiretroviral therapy for an entire year. We approach all of our efforts with one primary goal: inspire students to take action.

There are many ways to contribute. Pick your passion and go for it, whether it’s advocacy, biotech, medicine, research, or any other field. But first, make sure the rest of our generation is alongside you in your commitment to making this world a more just place.

FACE AIDS will have a formal recruiting process at the beginning of Winter Quarter. Please look for emails to come at the end of the quarter.

For more information about FACE AIDS contact Jonny Dorsey at jonny@faceaids.org