During its short existence, the Maybach Family Foundation has been successfully setting up young people with globally prominent mentors. Now the group is taking on AIDS in Uganda with the help of two young doctors from the region and their mentor, a San Francisco researcher.
The name Maybach may conjure thoughts of streamlined luxury vehicles, but the family behind the car is pushing a global effort to deliver AIDS treatment to those who may not otherwise receive it. Maybach Family Foundation creator, Ulrich Schmid-Maybach has partnered with Dr. David Bangsberg, a research faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco, to back two Ugandan HIV doctors who can help fight the spread of the disease. The announcement came in April at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, Calif.
“It’s not really linked with cars,” Schmid-Maybach told The Advocate. “It is to help other people in the world. It’s an economic question. Sick people can’t work. It turns into a downward spiral. The children of sick people can’t get an education because they’re preoccupied with heading their family. By addressing the AIDS crisis, we’re also addressing economic issues. We’re looking to get individuals whose talents we can leverage over a broad spectrum in order to really make a difference.”
Bangsberg heads the Family Treatment Fund based at the University of California, San Francisco, which has been researching and administering methods to distribute HIV drugs to Ugandans since 2000.
“Treatment in Uganda is so much more accessible now than it was 25 years ago,” Bangsberg said. “So the global response has improved the lives of people; however, it’s an emergent response. The long term, sustainable response relies on developing local leadership to develop and lead these programs, for decades to come.”
Since its inception in October 2006, the Maybach Mentorship Program has matched mentors who have made strides in their fields with future leaders all over the globe. The program supports those who are especially disadvantaged by giving them access to grants and suitable opportunities and thus offering them the chance to become innovators themselves. In this case, Bangsberg will mentor two young doctors, Irene Andia-Biraro and Dennis Nansera, who have been combating the spread of AIDS in Uganda with limited resources, staffing, and financial backing.
The Family Treatment Fund has mushroomed into an organization with global recognition, working hand in hand with the Global Fund and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Through their outreach, Bangsberg’s group came into contact with the doctors who, have dedicated their lives to helping those with HIV through treatment and medical care. Both Andia-Biraro and Nansera came to the U.S. to present, alongside Schmid-Maybach, the plans for the Maybach family foundation’s involvement in Uganda, alongside the Family Treatment Fund.
Each doctor is just three years out of medical school. Andia-Biraro runs 18 HIV hospitals and five clinics, while Nansera has built an HIV care facility for more than 1,000 infants and children. Currently, he is planning an integrated HIV/ tuberculosis clinic with a capacity for 1,500 patients.
Together, they will work with their mentor, Bangsberg, to improve the distribution of AIDS drugs and to administer care for patients with help through the Maybach Family Foundation.
Nansera described his efforts with children and adolescents who have been touched by AIDS as “a real challenge. I work with a pediatric group, which cares for people who are up to 18 years old, and within that 18 years, there are many examples of children who succumb to HIV. Prevention is so hard on so many planes because with breast-feeding, mothers who are HIV positive are still breast-feeding their children, and transmitting [the virus] on to their children.”
Teenagers witness so much early in their years that they become cynical and apathetic, losing hope for the future. “Usually, they feel that with HIV the next thing is death,” Nansera said. “So they feel that if
they’re going to die, then why should they struggle and go to school and try to have a good, healthy life. And a number of them are heading their homes since their parents have died from AIDS.”
Andia-Biraro said that a girl born in Uganda today has an estimated life span of about 40 years, and a 30 percent risk of contracting HIV, which can knock 10 years off her life. Women have further disadvantages in Uganda economically because they are more likely to drop out of school to care for family members who are infected.
“Most of the women in Uganda are less fortunate than me,” she said. “They have an apparent economic disadvantage in relation to men. We must help work toward economic independence of women. I know that this freedom will give them the confidence to make better choices, rear a healthy family, and stop the spread of HIV and AIDS.”
While young doctors in this region often leave for greener pastures, Nansera and Andia-Biraro aim to initiate infrastructure reform in their AIDS-ravaged homeland and to encourage the next generation of physicians to stay and help. Schmid-Maybach emphasizes his foundation is out to make an enduring impression.
“Our mission is more than providing these young people with money,” he said. “It is to provide them with a level of guidance, training, and experience that will propel them to have a substantial and long-term impact.’
Monday, May 28, 2007
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Why we call these women mamas
Mothers’ Day is being celebrated the world over today. In Uganda, there are some women who have come to be known as ‘mother figures’ and they are called by the title ‘mama’.
Mama, mama, mama, mama Mbire. No wonder you are so beautiful mama…" goes the popular local song Mama Mbire. It is a song that rings a bell in most Ugandans' ears and one that has become a praise-theme song for mothers all over the country.
Sung by Bobi Wine and Juliana Kanyomozi, the song was commissioned by Charles Mbire, Chairman of MTN Uganda, in praise of his mother at her 70th birthday. And in a way, it supplied a solution for the rest of us who cannot afford to commission artistes to sing our mothers' eulogies.
If each one of us were asked to talk about our mothers, we (most of us) could take all day talking about how special they are. As we celebrate International Mothers' Day however, we take a look at women in this country who have gained acclaim as mamas. Somehow, these women are called 'mama' by the whole public including those who have never met or even talked to them.
Mama Mbire Before the song came on the scene, those who had ever met this woman knew her as just any other Kampala businesswoman. But the song created an air about her that many young business and career women have come to look up to.
Besides being a renowned interior designer, who also owns a string of other business, she is one of the shrewdest businesswomen Uganda has known. At 73, Mama Mbire is also the Chairperson of Uganda Women Entrepreneurs Association. What more would an aspiring businesswoman look for in a mother figure? She lost her husband more than 20 years ago, but she managed to raise her children.
Mama Janet This one has been Uganda's First Lady for the last 21 years. We could say it would be fitting to describe her as the country's mama. But the reason she is referred to as Mama Janet is far from that. Her claim to the 'mama' endearment is the fact that she founded the Uganda Women's Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO). So it is no mistake at all to refer to her as the mother of the motherless.
In addition, Janet's youth conferences (what happened to them?), where she stressed the ABC strategy against Aids brought her more popularity as a caring mother for the country's youth. And then again, she talks with a motherly, counselling tone.
Mama Miria After more than 20 years in exile, she came home to bury her husband, former president Apollo Milton Obote (RIP), and bring her family home. But what awaited her was more than that. The Uganda People's Congress' father had passed on, and before she knew it Miria was being elected its mother. Despite the fact that all through her husband's two regimes Miria was hardly seen or heard from concerning politics, she is now a party president and already mentoring her son (Jimmy Akena, MP Lira Municipality) to carry on the Obote legacy.
And there is something about 71-year old Mama Miria that makes her break ground in several areas. She took care of the only man who has ruled Uganda two times, became the first woman party president and the first woman presidential contestant ever in Uganda. Mama Miria might not have planned a late-life political career, but she found herself already in too deep.
And her appealing, motherly voice has scored the UPC a few points. It is actually said that most people who voted her in the 2006 presidential elections did so, not because of the political leader but the mother figure they saw in her.
Mama Oyo It must be such a task to raise a king and a princess single-handedly. And the Queen Mother Best Kemigisa herself confirmed it in a Sunday Monitor article of April 1st. "I am not ordinarily a queen. I have also been a father to my children. It has been a great challenge raising them."
Death robbed the queen mother of her husband, but she has stood strong to raise a king and make sure he fulfills his duties to his people. For that matter, she has to tug along the young king to whichever ceremony and sit with him through press interviews see to it that he, being young, is streamlined in the values of the Batoro and that he keeps his image as a king.
She has also not just portrayed a picture of the mother of Toro. Rather, more often than not, she has passed on advice to young women, especially single mothers, on how cope. In the same article she says, "They should look after their children… they should pick themselves up and move on."
Mama Halima Often referred to as mama w'abadongo (mother of musicians), Halima is one woman who has gone the distance to take Ugandan music to the outside world, while encouraging young up and coming artistes to do the same. She also co owns a studio that has produced most of the music that has hit our airwaves for a long time now. So, as a mother, she provided a home for most of the artistes' voices.
Besides that, she has mentored her children to do music (Hemdee and Rachel K). She has been on the stage with Rachel, but she is also seen in almost every place Rachel goes to perform. Besides most of Halima's music has been remaking nursery Rymes. Remember Ekimbeewo? Someone must have told her that to be seen as a mother, she must sing for little ones.
Mama Gloria The subscribers to the theory of shaping something while it still grows must be applauding this woman. Thus, those who might not recognise her off-head must have seen, (or heard of) a female gospel artiste who composes and sings songs with her five-year old daughter. Nakibuuka is really a believer is the 'earlier the better', because at her age her daughter (baby Gloria), who has sung songs like Yesu Ayagala Abaana Abato and the most popular Mummy Mummy, is almost putting together an album.
So, if in her later life Gloria tells people that she sung even in her mother's womb, at least it wont be taken for cliché. But Betty has come out to show mothers that it does not take school for them to help their children discover themselves.
Mama Tendo Her ladder to fame was her Mum's Heart column in the New Vision, where she talked about every growth stage Tendo (her little son) went through and the challenges they posed for her. And with that background, she founded the Mama Tendo Foundation. Her parenting seminars have drawn a lot of young mothers to learn from each other the dynamics of taking care of their lovely little ones. The foundation has recently expanded to give free cervical cancer preventive treatment (pap smears) to young women.
Mama Angelina She might not be one woman who is always in the limelight, but Mama Angelina Waphakhabulo is among Uganda's few women who have taken it upon themselves to do something for a good cause. She lost her husband (James Wapakhabulo, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time of his death) and from her distress, she derived energy not depression. Angelina, founded Development Initiatives International, to address issues relating to HIV/Aids awareness, prevention, care and support in market places in Uganda. She is also a co- chairperson of United Way Uganda, an NGO spearheading making malaria history in Uganda by 2010. Mama Angelina is making sure to save as many lives as she can from Uganda's two leading tragedies.
Mama Blick Molly Johnson does not carry the Blick name, and thus it might not be easy for people to recognise by her real name. But she is the woman who has mothered Uganda's most prominent sports family. Molly is a mother to Arthur Blick Mugerwa snr, East Africa's 1971 motorbike champion, whose son, Arthur Blick Jnr, is a shinning star in Uganda's motor sport today. Her other son, Paddy Blick gave birth to now veteran rugger and hockey player also Vice Chairman Uganda Rugby Union (URU), William Blick. Molly's family sports thread is still being carried on by her other nephews and nieces like Norman Blick (basketball player) and Leila Mayanja, a hockey player.
But it didn't stop at just sports. Dr. Maggie Kigozi, a medical doctor and the Chairperson of Uganda Investment Authority, who is one of the most powerful women in Uganda, is also Molly's daughter. What a mother!
Mama, mama, mama, mama Mbire. No wonder you are so beautiful mama…" goes the popular local song Mama Mbire. It is a song that rings a bell in most Ugandans' ears and one that has become a praise-theme song for mothers all over the country.
Sung by Bobi Wine and Juliana Kanyomozi, the song was commissioned by Charles Mbire, Chairman of MTN Uganda, in praise of his mother at her 70th birthday. And in a way, it supplied a solution for the rest of us who cannot afford to commission artistes to sing our mothers' eulogies.
If each one of us were asked to talk about our mothers, we (most of us) could take all day talking about how special they are. As we celebrate International Mothers' Day however, we take a look at women in this country who have gained acclaim as mamas. Somehow, these women are called 'mama' by the whole public including those who have never met or even talked to them.
Mama Mbire Before the song came on the scene, those who had ever met this woman knew her as just any other Kampala businesswoman. But the song created an air about her that many young business and career women have come to look up to.
Besides being a renowned interior designer, who also owns a string of other business, she is one of the shrewdest businesswomen Uganda has known. At 73, Mama Mbire is also the Chairperson of Uganda Women Entrepreneurs Association. What more would an aspiring businesswoman look for in a mother figure? She lost her husband more than 20 years ago, but she managed to raise her children.
Mama Janet This one has been Uganda's First Lady for the last 21 years. We could say it would be fitting to describe her as the country's mama. But the reason she is referred to as Mama Janet is far from that. Her claim to the 'mama' endearment is the fact that she founded the Uganda Women's Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO). So it is no mistake at all to refer to her as the mother of the motherless.
In addition, Janet's youth conferences (what happened to them?), where she stressed the ABC strategy against Aids brought her more popularity as a caring mother for the country's youth. And then again, she talks with a motherly, counselling tone.
Mama Miria After more than 20 years in exile, she came home to bury her husband, former president Apollo Milton Obote (RIP), and bring her family home. But what awaited her was more than that. The Uganda People's Congress' father had passed on, and before she knew it Miria was being elected its mother. Despite the fact that all through her husband's two regimes Miria was hardly seen or heard from concerning politics, she is now a party president and already mentoring her son (Jimmy Akena, MP Lira Municipality) to carry on the Obote legacy.
And there is something about 71-year old Mama Miria that makes her break ground in several areas. She took care of the only man who has ruled Uganda two times, became the first woman party president and the first woman presidential contestant ever in Uganda. Mama Miria might not have planned a late-life political career, but she found herself already in too deep.
And her appealing, motherly voice has scored the UPC a few points. It is actually said that most people who voted her in the 2006 presidential elections did so, not because of the political leader but the mother figure they saw in her.
Mama Oyo It must be such a task to raise a king and a princess single-handedly. And the Queen Mother Best Kemigisa herself confirmed it in a Sunday Monitor article of April 1st. "I am not ordinarily a queen. I have also been a father to my children. It has been a great challenge raising them."
Death robbed the queen mother of her husband, but she has stood strong to raise a king and make sure he fulfills his duties to his people. For that matter, she has to tug along the young king to whichever ceremony and sit with him through press interviews see to it that he, being young, is streamlined in the values of the Batoro and that he keeps his image as a king.
She has also not just portrayed a picture of the mother of Toro. Rather, more often than not, she has passed on advice to young women, especially single mothers, on how cope. In the same article she says, "They should look after their children… they should pick themselves up and move on."
Mama Halima Often referred to as mama w'abadongo (mother of musicians), Halima is one woman who has gone the distance to take Ugandan music to the outside world, while encouraging young up and coming artistes to do the same. She also co owns a studio that has produced most of the music that has hit our airwaves for a long time now. So, as a mother, she provided a home for most of the artistes' voices.
Besides that, she has mentored her children to do music (Hemdee and Rachel K). She has been on the stage with Rachel, but she is also seen in almost every place Rachel goes to perform. Besides most of Halima's music has been remaking nursery Rymes. Remember Ekimbeewo? Someone must have told her that to be seen as a mother, she must sing for little ones.
Mama Gloria The subscribers to the theory of shaping something while it still grows must be applauding this woman. Thus, those who might not recognise her off-head must have seen, (or heard of) a female gospel artiste who composes and sings songs with her five-year old daughter. Nakibuuka is really a believer is the 'earlier the better', because at her age her daughter (baby Gloria), who has sung songs like Yesu Ayagala Abaana Abato and the most popular Mummy Mummy, is almost putting together an album.
So, if in her later life Gloria tells people that she sung even in her mother's womb, at least it wont be taken for cliché. But Betty has come out to show mothers that it does not take school for them to help their children discover themselves.
Mama Tendo Her ladder to fame was her Mum's Heart column in the New Vision, where she talked about every growth stage Tendo (her little son) went through and the challenges they posed for her. And with that background, she founded the Mama Tendo Foundation. Her parenting seminars have drawn a lot of young mothers to learn from each other the dynamics of taking care of their lovely little ones. The foundation has recently expanded to give free cervical cancer preventive treatment (pap smears) to young women.
Mama Angelina She might not be one woman who is always in the limelight, but Mama Angelina Waphakhabulo is among Uganda's few women who have taken it upon themselves to do something for a good cause. She lost her husband (James Wapakhabulo, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time of his death) and from her distress, she derived energy not depression. Angelina, founded Development Initiatives International, to address issues relating to HIV/Aids awareness, prevention, care and support in market places in Uganda. She is also a co- chairperson of United Way Uganda, an NGO spearheading making malaria history in Uganda by 2010. Mama Angelina is making sure to save as many lives as she can from Uganda's two leading tragedies.
Mama Blick Molly Johnson does not carry the Blick name, and thus it might not be easy for people to recognise by her real name. But she is the woman who has mothered Uganda's most prominent sports family. Molly is a mother to Arthur Blick Mugerwa snr, East Africa's 1971 motorbike champion, whose son, Arthur Blick Jnr, is a shinning star in Uganda's motor sport today. Her other son, Paddy Blick gave birth to now veteran rugger and hockey player also Vice Chairman Uganda Rugby Union (URU), William Blick. Molly's family sports thread is still being carried on by her other nephews and nieces like Norman Blick (basketball player) and Leila Mayanja, a hockey player.
But it didn't stop at just sports. Dr. Maggie Kigozi, a medical doctor and the Chairperson of Uganda Investment Authority, who is one of the most powerful women in Uganda, is also Molly's daughter. What a mother!
Friday, May 4, 2007
KC photographer is seeking aid for her subjects in Uganda
Children pranced around Gloria Baker Feinstein, eyes filled with wonder at the device the Kansas City photographer held in her hand. It was only a digital camera, but to the knot of Ugandan orphans, it might as well have been a magic wand.
They had never seen themselves before. Not in a photo, not even in a mirror. For that matter most had never seen a muzungu, the Swahili word for white person.
When they met Feinstein some stared, while others wanted to touch her skin. One began to scream. But soon they were running around taking pictures of each other with the pile of disposable cameras she gave them.
Feinstein, 52, went on her “photographic mission” to Uganda late last year out of “a need to do something helpful by photographing something important.” A one-woman exhibit of black-and-white images from her trip opened Friday at the Leopold Gallery in Brookside.
She went with Maine Photographic Workshops, a photo and film school in Rockport that offers advanced training to serious photographers. Much of her time was spent at rural orphanages. She also spent four days with a family who lived in a mud hut in a remote village, with no electricity or running water. The conditions were poor, the needs overwhelming. Somehow, it didn’t define them.
“In Uganda,” she wrote on her Web site (gloriabakerfeinstein.com) “there is something sorrowful and achingly sad in the air, in the eyes of the orphaned children, in the dirty water they drink, in the torn clothing they wear, in the doomed futures many of them face.
“There is also something completely beautiful and uplifting in the air, in the way the sun rises and gently lays back down, in the elegant and graceful stance of the women, in the impromptu games of the children, in the throbbing of the drums, in the gladness of a tender greeting from a perfect stranger.
“Most of the people I met have nothing. And yet their hearts are so full; they’re so kind and warm.”
She stayed in Uganda for three weeks, photographing three orphanages, recording stark images of the children.
“There are so many children,” she said. “There is a kind of a middle generation that’s just been erased. In all, 2.2 million orphans in Uganda have lost either one or both parents to AIDS or the war. And so there are all these children who have to find their way. They’re sometimes taken in by a grandmother. Others end up on the street. I just wanted to tell their stories through pictures.”
You can find some of Feinstein’s Uganda pictures on her Web site. One of her favorites is of a boy standing by a chalkboard with a powerful gaze.
“He sums up what I saw in the eyes of most children there, which was part resignation and part hope,” Feinstein said. “Those eyes. They just won’t let go of you.”
When it was time to go home, she couldn’t just walk away. There had to be something she could do to help. She started a foundation called Change the Truth to benefit a Ugandan orphanage. In the months she has been home she has raised enough money to send six kids to school and buy equipment to help them start a brick-making business. She plans to keep helping them and even to return this summer with her husband.
Since she was a toddler, Feinstein has used cameras to make sense of her world. One of her earliest memories is as a 3-year-old propping up her toy bunny against a cardboard box and taking a picture with her Brownie camera. She built a darkroom in her house as a teenager and grew up to become a professional photographer. She sold fine-art photos at her own gallery until 1992, when she opened a portrait business.
Then something happened that energized her passion for documentary photography. She took on a project for the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education that resulted in a book with fellow photographer David Sosland called From the Heart.
The book, published in 2001 by Kansas City Star Books, featured portraits of, and interviews with, 50 Holocaust survivors from the Kansas City area. Shortly thereafter she went to Europe to photograph eight concentration camps.
That led to another book, Among the Ashes, published in 2004. She knew then that she could use her camera to educate, enlighten and make a difference. Now, after her experience in Africa, she doesn’t know if she’ll ever go back to portrait work.
“You get requests from people to make their teeth whiter, to make their arms look thinner or to get rid of their double chin,” she said. “That seems pretty insignificant compared to taking pictures of kids who didn’t know where their next meal was coming from or where they were going to put their heads down that night. It just put things in perspective for me.”
Feinstein is now dedicated to raising awareness — and money — to help send more orphans to school.
“These children know the only way they are going to get out of the rut they are in is by education. These kids don’t want new sneakers; they don’t want a new Ipod. They just want a school uniform, books and a classroom.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE DETAILS
•Pictures from Gloria Baker Feinstein’s photographic mission to Uganda can be seen at an exhibit at the Leopold Gallery, 324 W. 63rd St. in Brookside. The exhibit runs through May 24.
•For more information, or to make a donation, you can log on to Feinstein’s blog, gloriainafrica. blogspot.com.
Twenty percent of sales will be donated to Change the Truth, which supports children at St. Mary Kevin Orphanage Motherhood, an AIDS orphanage in Kajjansi, Uganda.
•The Leopold Gallery is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Feinstein’s Uganda pictures also can be seen on her Web site: gloriabakerfeinstein.com.
They had never seen themselves before. Not in a photo, not even in a mirror. For that matter most had never seen a muzungu, the Swahili word for white person.
When they met Feinstein some stared, while others wanted to touch her skin. One began to scream. But soon they were running around taking pictures of each other with the pile of disposable cameras she gave them.
Feinstein, 52, went on her “photographic mission” to Uganda late last year out of “a need to do something helpful by photographing something important.” A one-woman exhibit of black-and-white images from her trip opened Friday at the Leopold Gallery in Brookside.
She went with Maine Photographic Workshops, a photo and film school in Rockport that offers advanced training to serious photographers. Much of her time was spent at rural orphanages. She also spent four days with a family who lived in a mud hut in a remote village, with no electricity or running water. The conditions were poor, the needs overwhelming. Somehow, it didn’t define them.
“In Uganda,” she wrote on her Web site (gloriabakerfeinstein.com) “there is something sorrowful and achingly sad in the air, in the eyes of the orphaned children, in the dirty water they drink, in the torn clothing they wear, in the doomed futures many of them face.
“There is also something completely beautiful and uplifting in the air, in the way the sun rises and gently lays back down, in the elegant and graceful stance of the women, in the impromptu games of the children, in the throbbing of the drums, in the gladness of a tender greeting from a perfect stranger.
“Most of the people I met have nothing. And yet their hearts are so full; they’re so kind and warm.”
She stayed in Uganda for three weeks, photographing three orphanages, recording stark images of the children.
“There are so many children,” she said. “There is a kind of a middle generation that’s just been erased. In all, 2.2 million orphans in Uganda have lost either one or both parents to AIDS or the war. And so there are all these children who have to find their way. They’re sometimes taken in by a grandmother. Others end up on the street. I just wanted to tell their stories through pictures.”
You can find some of Feinstein’s Uganda pictures on her Web site. One of her favorites is of a boy standing by a chalkboard with a powerful gaze.
“He sums up what I saw in the eyes of most children there, which was part resignation and part hope,” Feinstein said. “Those eyes. They just won’t let go of you.”
When it was time to go home, she couldn’t just walk away. There had to be something she could do to help. She started a foundation called Change the Truth to benefit a Ugandan orphanage. In the months she has been home she has raised enough money to send six kids to school and buy equipment to help them start a brick-making business. She plans to keep helping them and even to return this summer with her husband.
Since she was a toddler, Feinstein has used cameras to make sense of her world. One of her earliest memories is as a 3-year-old propping up her toy bunny against a cardboard box and taking a picture with her Brownie camera. She built a darkroom in her house as a teenager and grew up to become a professional photographer. She sold fine-art photos at her own gallery until 1992, when she opened a portrait business.
Then something happened that energized her passion for documentary photography. She took on a project for the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education that resulted in a book with fellow photographer David Sosland called From the Heart.
The book, published in 2001 by Kansas City Star Books, featured portraits of, and interviews with, 50 Holocaust survivors from the Kansas City area. Shortly thereafter she went to Europe to photograph eight concentration camps.
That led to another book, Among the Ashes, published in 2004. She knew then that she could use her camera to educate, enlighten and make a difference. Now, after her experience in Africa, she doesn’t know if she’ll ever go back to portrait work.
“You get requests from people to make their teeth whiter, to make their arms look thinner or to get rid of their double chin,” she said. “That seems pretty insignificant compared to taking pictures of kids who didn’t know where their next meal was coming from or where they were going to put their heads down that night. It just put things in perspective for me.”
Feinstein is now dedicated to raising awareness — and money — to help send more orphans to school.
“These children know the only way they are going to get out of the rut they are in is by education. These kids don’t want new sneakers; they don’t want a new Ipod. They just want a school uniform, books and a classroom.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE DETAILS
•Pictures from Gloria Baker Feinstein’s photographic mission to Uganda can be seen at an exhibit at the Leopold Gallery, 324 W. 63rd St. in Brookside. The exhibit runs through May 24.
•For more information, or to make a donation, you can log on to Feinstein’s blog, gloriainafrica. blogspot.com.
Twenty percent of sales will be donated to Change the Truth, which supports children at St. Mary Kevin Orphanage Motherhood, an AIDS orphanage in Kajjansi, Uganda.
•The Leopold Gallery is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Feinstein’s Uganda pictures also can be seen on her Web site: gloriabakerfeinstein.com.
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