How We Portray Africans
Mary Donohoe, Founder of The Rose ProjectPortraying Africans as passive recipients of other nation's charity is simply an injustice - nothing could be further from the truth.
Too many of us think of starving babies and desperate people when we think of East & Southern Africa.
One of the main reasons that Mary Donohoe set up The Rose Project was to challenge that image of East & Southern Africa and to highlight the African response to the AIDS pandemic.
We all got scared when bird flu threatened us in 2005. Imagine if that virus had taken hold?
Imagine if we had lost relatives and friends to a seemingly unstoppable and incurable virus?
Fear and powerlessness would be pervasive. Mass grief at the loss of so many loved ones. Concern about our future as entire generations is wiped out.
This is what so many Africans are facing every day for the last two decades.
Ever since HIV reached their continent, the African people have had to survive and cope as the pandemic works its evil course and wipes out their loved ones.
"These are a people swimming against an overwhelming wave of illness, but their response is heroic.
"If we do nothing else we owe it to them to give an accurate account of their response." Mary Donohoe addressing a fundraiser in the Four Seasons Hotel 2006
"Despite their impossible circumstances, these people just get up and go"
They never complain and what a sense of humour! I can only surmise that many of these people in impossible circumstances must to draw on inner resources-the resources that facilitate survival otherwise they couldn't manage but they're the people who can change things; they've done so much already.
Portraying Africans as passive recipients of other nation's charity is simply an injustice - nothing could be further from the truth.
The Rose Project supports people affected by HIV or AIDS in Eastern & Southern Africa. It provides medical, nursing and pyscho-social care. It is named after Rose Atieno, a young Kenyan woman who was estimated to have been the 16 millionth person to die of AIDS.
Find out about projects funded by The Rose Project.
