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hello.. just wanted to let you know that the latest Vanity Fair (July 2007) .. it is a special edition on Africa, guest edited by Bono, and *full* of interviews, current info+stats, the latest innovative projects, online resources, and general status of the situation ... i've put a few snippits below (from vanityfair.com)
brooklyn
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The 21 people who put their famous faces to work for this issue say it all. Annie Leibovitz paired them up on 20 different covers—shout-outs for the challenge, the promise, and the future of Africa.
BONO
Musician, activist, and V.F.'s first-ever guest editor, Bono is in favor of erecting a very big tent when it comes to the AIDS epidemic. "This is an emergency—normal rules don't apply. There are no easy good or bad guys," he says. "Do you think an African mother cares if the drugs keeping her child alive are thanks to an iPod or a church plate? Or a Democrat or a Republican? I don't think that mother gives a damn about where that 20-cent pill comes from, so why should we. It can lead to some uncomfortable bedfellows, but sometimes less sleep means you are more awake."
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU
As a leader of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement and, later, its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has devoted his life to working for human rights. In 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Currently, he is establishing the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre, in Cape Town, to, he says, "promote sustainable peace and values-based leadership throughout the world." (For more details, go to tutu.org.)
BRAD PITT
Brad Pitt's activism in New Orleans, Haiti, and Africa has received worldwide attention. His involvement in Africa began in 2004 with visits to Ethiopia and South Africa; in 2005 he helped launch the One Campaign to Make Poverty History. He is also a co-founder of Not on Our Watch, which teamed with the International Rescue Committee to hold premieres of Pitt's current film, Ocean's Thirteen, to benefit Darfur. He interviews Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
MADONNA
"I asked one of the children in Malawi, 'If you've got the world listening to you, if there's one thing you could say to the world, what would you say?,'" Madonna told Dr. Jim Yong Kim, former director of the World Health Organization's H.I.V./AIDS department. "And the boy said, 'Please just help us forget that we're orphans.'" Madonna and Dr. Kim's conversation about the plight of the more than one million AIDS orphans in Malawi is on vanityfair.com; read her own account of her work in Malawi in the Fanfair section.
MAYA ANGELOU
"The dignity of the African people simply will not be dismissed with 100 years of colonialism and the years of having slavery as the main export," says author, poet, historian, director, performer, and civil-rights activist Dr. Maya Angelou, who in 1996 was named a national ambassador to UNICEF. "You have to stand up for the fellow who's been knocked down," she says. "I am filled with gratitude for those who say, 'I identify with those people because they are human beings, and nothing human can be alien to me.' That's a powerful statement and a powerful thing to do."
BILL AND MELINDA GATES
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent $8 billion on global health, including the fight against AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in Africa and elsewhere. "I'm optimistic," says Bill, "that people's thinking will evolve on the question of health inequity—that people will finally accept that the death of a child in the developing world is just as tragic and worthy of our attention as the death of a child in the rich world." Melinda adds, "I believe the connection happens when you see people as neighbors and not as strangers. The people of Africa are our neighbors."
OPRAH WINFREY
Through her Angel Network, the public charity she founded in 1998, talk-show host and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey has helped fund 28 schools in five African countries as well as personally creating the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, in South Africa, in 2007. She says, "Education is freedom; it's the only way out. Despite the poverty and despair many of these young African children face every day, they have a fierce determination to get an education. I want to help give them the chance they deserve."
GEORGE CLOONEY
In 2005, George Clooney was going through the Oscar process when he read about the crisis in Darfur: "I wanted to take all the attention I was getting and do something positive with it. [But] you can't just talk about an issue, you have to understand it fully, you have to be there." With his father, Nick, Clooney traveled to Chad to film the 2007 documentary A Journey to Darfur. "The more time you spend with the people in the camps, who are holding on by a whisper and still believe that their lives will be better," he says, "the more you believe that anything is possible."
JAY-Z
Jay-Z went to Africa in 2006 on his first world tour and found a cause: 1.1 billion people don't have clean drinking water. He teamed up with the U.N., bought pumps, helped supply clean, running water to an entire village, and, with MTV, filmed a documentary, Water for Life. "I come from the Marcy projects, in Brooklyn," he says, "which is considered a tough place to grow up, but this [showed me] how good we have it. The rappers who say, 'We're from the 'hood,' take it from me, you're not from the 'hood. You haven't seen people with no access to water. It really put things in perspective."
DON CHEADLE
Don Cheadle became acutely aware of the crisis in Darfur while filming Hotel Rwanda in 2003. Since then he has returned to Africa to spend time in refugee camps, testified before a Senate subcommittee on human rights, and co-authored (with John Prendergast) Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond. "Though the situation in Darfur today is dire," he says, "if our leaders insert themselves in a multilateral, political, and diplomatic process, I believe we can help to end the pain and suffering of literally millions of civilians."
brooklyn
*********************************************
The 21 people who put their famous faces to work for this issue say it all. Annie Leibovitz paired them up on 20 different covers—shout-outs for the challenge, the promise, and the future of Africa.
BONO
Musician, activist, and V.F.'s first-ever guest editor, Bono is in favor of erecting a very big tent when it comes to the AIDS epidemic. "This is an emergency—normal rules don't apply. There are no easy good or bad guys," he says. "Do you think an African mother cares if the drugs keeping her child alive are thanks to an iPod or a church plate? Or a Democrat or a Republican? I don't think that mother gives a damn about where that 20-cent pill comes from, so why should we. It can lead to some uncomfortable bedfellows, but sometimes less sleep means you are more awake."
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU
As a leader of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement and, later, its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has devoted his life to working for human rights. In 1984 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Currently, he is establishing the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre, in Cape Town, to, he says, "promote sustainable peace and values-based leadership throughout the world." (For more details, go to tutu.org.)
BRAD PITT
Brad Pitt's activism in New Orleans, Haiti, and Africa has received worldwide attention. His involvement in Africa began in 2004 with visits to Ethiopia and South Africa; in 2005 he helped launch the One Campaign to Make Poverty History. He is also a co-founder of Not on Our Watch, which teamed with the International Rescue Committee to hold premieres of Pitt's current film, Ocean's Thirteen, to benefit Darfur. He interviews Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
MADONNA
"I asked one of the children in Malawi, 'If you've got the world listening to you, if there's one thing you could say to the world, what would you say?,'" Madonna told Dr. Jim Yong Kim, former director of the World Health Organization's H.I.V./AIDS department. "And the boy said, 'Please just help us forget that we're orphans.'" Madonna and Dr. Kim's conversation about the plight of the more than one million AIDS orphans in Malawi is on vanityfair.com; read her own account of her work in Malawi in the Fanfair section.
MAYA ANGELOU
"The dignity of the African people simply will not be dismissed with 100 years of colonialism and the years of having slavery as the main export," says author, poet, historian, director, performer, and civil-rights activist Dr. Maya Angelou, who in 1996 was named a national ambassador to UNICEF. "You have to stand up for the fellow who's been knocked down," she says. "I am filled with gratitude for those who say, 'I identify with those people because they are human beings, and nothing human can be alien to me.' That's a powerful statement and a powerful thing to do."
BILL AND MELINDA GATES
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent $8 billion on global health, including the fight against AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in Africa and elsewhere. "I'm optimistic," says Bill, "that people's thinking will evolve on the question of health inequity—that people will finally accept that the death of a child in the developing world is just as tragic and worthy of our attention as the death of a child in the rich world." Melinda adds, "I believe the connection happens when you see people as neighbors and not as strangers. The people of Africa are our neighbors."
OPRAH WINFREY
Through her Angel Network, the public charity she founded in 1998, talk-show host and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey has helped fund 28 schools in five African countries as well as personally creating the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, in South Africa, in 2007. She says, "Education is freedom; it's the only way out. Despite the poverty and despair many of these young African children face every day, they have a fierce determination to get an education. I want to help give them the chance they deserve."
GEORGE CLOONEY
In 2005, George Clooney was going through the Oscar process when he read about the crisis in Darfur: "I wanted to take all the attention I was getting and do something positive with it. [But] you can't just talk about an issue, you have to understand it fully, you have to be there." With his father, Nick, Clooney traveled to Chad to film the 2007 documentary A Journey to Darfur. "The more time you spend with the people in the camps, who are holding on by a whisper and still believe that their lives will be better," he says, "the more you believe that anything is possible."
JAY-Z
Jay-Z went to Africa in 2006 on his first world tour and found a cause: 1.1 billion people don't have clean drinking water. He teamed up with the U.N., bought pumps, helped supply clean, running water to an entire village, and, with MTV, filmed a documentary, Water for Life. "I come from the Marcy projects, in Brooklyn," he says, "which is considered a tough place to grow up, but this [showed me] how good we have it. The rappers who say, 'We're from the 'hood,' take it from me, you're not from the 'hood. You haven't seen people with no access to water. It really put things in perspective."
DON CHEADLE
Don Cheadle became acutely aware of the crisis in Darfur while filming Hotel Rwanda in 2003. Since then he has returned to Africa to spend time in refugee camps, testified before a Senate subcommittee on human rights, and co-authored (with John Prendergast) Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond. "Though the situation in Darfur today is dire," he says, "if our leaders insert themselves in a multilateral, political, and diplomatic process, I believe we can help to end the pain and suffering of literally millions of civilians."
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