How can you help?

Many of the readers of this blog have asked: How can we help the people in the orphanages and centers profiled on Lives in Focus. It is obvious but what they need most is money to provide the treatment, the care and the activities to keep the children healthy. Others need funds to help pay for representation in the courts.

Lives in Focus has compiled a list of places you might send a check. Remember the exchange rate between the dollar and the Indian Rupee turns even $5 dollars into a windfall for these places. The centers below are also international tax-deductible charities. Please do mention that you heard about them through Lives in Focus:

• Network of HIV Positive People (Family Counseling Center)
  ATTN: M. Swapna
  H.No. 8-3-167/30, Venkateswara Housing Society, Erragadda
  Hyderabad-38, India
• Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit
  Programme Management Unit (PMU)
  ATTN: Anand Grover
  Jalaram Kripa, Ground Floor
  No. 61, Janmabhoomi Marg, Fort
  Mumbai 400001 , Indiaemail: aidslaw@lawyerscollective.org
  website: www.lawyerscollective.org
• Freedom Foundation Bangalore
  ATTN: Ashok Rau
  Office - 180, Hennur Cross,
  Bangalore - 560 043. India
• Freedom Foundation Hyderabad
  ATTN: Dr. Troy Cunningham
  21 Cariappa Road, Bolarum
  Secundrabad 500 010, India
  Telephone: 011 91 40 2786 2148 or 011 91 40 2786 5530

Second BBC interview

UPDATE: The BBC and PocketPlanetRadio links no longer lead directly to the interview. I have linked directly to the interview here.

We recorded an interview with the BBC earlier this week that is scheduled to be aired Monday, July 18 some time between 8 and 10 PM (New York time.) Here is a link to the program site. The segment appears in the second half of the show. Or you can listen to a longer version on the BBC producer’s personal website, Pocketplanetradio.com.

Stereotypes

At the South Asian Journalists Association convention this past week, I had an opportunity to hear Ross Kauffman (2005 Oscar winner for “Born into Brothels“) and Roberto Romano (”Stolen Childhoods“) speak about the filming and editing process of their documentaries. I also heard Shahidul Alam, a leading Bangladeshi photojournalist, talk about his experience taking photographs of Muslims, and other South Asian people.

What struck me about the work of Kauffman and Alam work overall, is that they showed children in their own environment–doing what they do–and they let that do the talking about their conditions rather than any heavy-handed images of people suffering. Alam was especially sensitive about showing “Brown” people living their lives rather than showing them the way the Western media normally wants to see them: almost always in dramatic images of suffering.

Srinivas and I also hold that it is best to show the richness of people’s daily lives, the kind we see in the smallest interaction. The trick will be to balance that with the global implications that are winding their way into the issue…weaving it in so people can contrast the daily lives with the social and economic politicis in the background.

The effectiveness of a grassroots campaign

In an age when information is equal to power, corporations are more than ever sensitive to their brand image. We hope to accomplish something similar with the WTO as Amit Srivastava has accomplished againt Coke. This article ran on the front page of the Wall Street Journal this week:

Virtual Battle: How a Global Web of Activists Gives Coke Problems in India
Mr. Srivastava Uses Internet To Fuse Protest Groups; Court Order on Pesticides
Company Sees ‘Brandjacking’

You can find a PDF of the entire article here.

I don’t know enough about the Coke case to know if all the statistics used by both sides are supported by the facts, but the article does underscore the effectiveness of such an Internet-based campaign.

But as journalist and photo-journalist team, we think it critical that we present the stories of people whose lives have been altered by the new patent law. The project’s goal is to bring the concept of oral history into the digital multimedia age.

Narrowing the departure dates

Looks like Srinivas and Sandeep will leave for India around June 23 and return a month later. We are booked on Kuwait Air (the cheapest tickets we could find). We have to pay for the tickets by Monday, June 6.

2004 Interview with Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS unit in Mumbai, India

The following is an excerpt from an unpublished interview Sandeep conducted in 2004 in Bombay:

The battle against HIV/AIDS in developing countries will get even tougher starting Jan. 1, 2005. That’s the date the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement goes into full force. When the law first went into effect in 1995, it allowed developing nations to produce and sell at lower prices drugs patented by Western companies. This was a crucial exemption that allowed countries like India to make affordable antiretroviral drugs. But soon all countries will have to implement the trade agreement’s full patent protections, pushing the cost of some medications out of reach for the local populace.

"This is not just an HIV treatment issue–it applies to various industries–but it’s a matter of big concern in the HIV context," said Vivek Divan, an attorney and project coordinator of the advocacy group Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS unit in Mumbai, India. "How will the West’s monopolies in pharmaceuticals patents ultimately impact access to these drugs at a fair cost? There are emerging treatments that over the next 10 years will provide more sophisticated antiretroviral drugs that will be out of reach for people in countries like India."

Divan recently took time to discuss the HIV/AIDS crisis in India, the effectiveness of the government’s efforts, and to layout the issues grassroots organizations will face in the coming years.

Q.  What are some of the most pressing issues facing HIV/AIDS grassroots organization over the next five years?

A.  The delivery of antiretroviral treatments is going to be a key issue in the next few years. How do you build the inventory? How do you build community preparedness? 

Vaccine research is also a great area of concern.  We have guidelines on the ethics of biomedical and behavioral research in India but we also have a history of abuse of those guidelines where subjects of research have been damaged. Women have especially been exploited for contraceptive research. How do you implement guidelines and ensure that researchers follow them?

Another big challenge is that surveillance [statistical surveying] has to improve. I don’t think they have the right numbers. Is it 4.58 million? Is it many more? How can they say that Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have a low prevalence of HIV? How can they possibly be providing such statistics? I know personally of 10 people who are dead in Bihar from HIV and they say they’ve only had 40 cases in the last 10 years. The numbers cannot be so low…

Fundraising–the worst part!

The hardest part of fundraising has been getting IGNORED by most NGOs that study, support or fund AIDS/HIV projects. We don’t feel hurt about not getting any $$$ from them (everyone must ask for $ from them all the time.) We are talking about just NEVER hearing back from them. No words of support, no words of encouragement. NOTHING!

Still, there is one person at the Ford Foundation, a major foundation, who has supported us with comments, suggestions, encouragement, and possibly an assignment in India that is equivalent to receiving some funding. A big thanks to you Elizabeth C.

The next stage of planning: setting our schedule

Sandeep was in NYC this past weekend to give a talk for the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund at NYU. Having the DJNF fly Sandeep out gave us a great chance to begin planning our trip to India. We talked about dates for leaving, interviews to set up, equipment we needed to take, sources to contact, the hardest hits places to visit, airplane and train schedules, etc…

That we have have a lot to do in the next month is an understatement…

SAJA Reporting Fellowships

As a Board member of the South Asian Journalism Association, Sandeep is not eligible to apply for the SAJA Reporting Fellowship. But any other journalists, photographers or documentary-film makers interested in funding for an indepth project about the long-term consequences of the Tsunami should DEFINITELY look into this new fellowship. The deadline is less than a month away, so apply soon!

$3,000…almost to $5,000 goal

We have raised just over a $1,000 in 10 days by letting people know about the project by email, word of mouth and over the Internet. $2,000 more to go…