Keep a Child Alive

KEEP A CHILD ALIVE (KCA) is an urgent response to the AIDS pandemic ravaging Africa. With more than 25 million already dead, the disease continues, wiping out whole societies, threatening economic infrastructure and creating tragic devastation in the family structure. KCA’s work makes it possible for children and families to obtain life-saving AIDS drugs and support for survival, where without it, they would die. Keep a Child Alive gives 100% of the public’s donations to this lifesaving work.

Through our groundbreaking advertising and media campaigns, we are re-inventing the way the public perceives their role in this issue. Keep a Child Alive is committed to direct action, and remains small and bureaucracy-free so that our speed of response is never hampered. KCA offers a very real solution to the problem, all on a personal scale.

Keep a Child Alive is dedicated to providing life-saving anti-retroviral treatment, care and support services to children and their families with HIV/AIDS in Africa and the developing world by directly engaging the global public in the fight against AIDS.

The seed of Keep a Child Alive was sown in Kenya in 2002. Royalties from Leigh Blake's previous fundraiser, Red Hot & Blue, built the AIDS Research and Family Care Clinic in Mombasa. A woman named Anne walked in to the clinic, desperate to obtain the anti-retroviral drugs her three-year-old son Brine needed to survive. At the time the medication's high cost was an impossible dream for most Africans to afford, and Leigh was so moved by this woman and her courage that she decided to pay for them.

What started as a very personal incident between two mothers has become a tremendous initiative for change. With around 3,000 children and family members on ARV treatment, over 45,000 people under our care, three orphanages receiving funding, and major clinic sites in expansion, Keep a Child Alive is making a direct impact in the lives of so many who need help.

KCA FOCUS ON THE FOLLOWING THREE AREAS:

TREATMENT Anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment has transformed the lives of people with AIDS in the West, returning them from sickness to health. But less than 10% of children with AIDS have access to these life-saving drugs. When the children are infected, 50% die before the age of 2.

CARE Keep a Child Alive provides the medical services needed to make treatment possible. Doctors, nutrition, testing, transportation and treatment for opportunistic infections are all necessary for anti-retroviral treatment to be successful.

ORPHANS Currently 15.2 million children worldwide have lost one or both parents to AIDS and 12 million of these children are in Sub Saharan Africa. These children will face enormous risks in their struggle to stay alive, and many suffer the terrible trauma of losing their parents in front of them. Keep a Child Alive supports the children’s extended family caregivers, and builds and sustains orphanages to keep the most vulnerable children out of harm's way.

KCA CURRENTLY PROVIDES FUNDING TO:
9 clinical and orphan care sites in 5 countries: India, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda. Since 2003, Keep a Child Alive has funded 11 additional projects in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, South Africa and Zimbabwe. With KCA funding, these projects have been successfully scaled to new levels of service to and self-sustainability within their communities.

Please Visit our Blog: http://keepachildaliveblog.blogspot.com/ to see the work we are doing RIGHT NOW.

Leigh Blake:

For more than 30 years, Leigh Blake has been an advocate, harbinger and creator of the arts - from music and film, to fashion and the visual arts.

While her creative career was thriving, a surging epidemic was starting to gravely affect Leigh's peers in the arts. The epidemic was AIDS and Leigh would not sit by. She turned her creative prowess to making a difference and co-founded the Red Hot Organization, the seminal music industry initiative that raised funds for HIV/AIDS research and education.

In 2000, with money she garnered from her work with Red Hot + Blue, Leigh began the building of a clinic in Kenya, which, under the guidance of Dr. Shaffiq Essajee at New York University Medical Centre, is a model for many Leigh wants to build all over Africa. One day in the clinic a woman named Anne brought her child Brine, for medical care. He was extremely sick and clearly was not going to survive. Anne refused to leave the clinic until she received the "drugs that you have in America for your children." This was a eureka moment for Leigh and the day that she would recognize her calling. Leigh told Anne to go home, that she would pay for the drugs, knowing that if it had happened to her son, she would have done the same. The idea for her next initiative, Keep a Child Alive, was born at that moment but it took a while to get it realized.

In 2003 Leigh officially founded Keep A Child Alive, which provides vitally needed anti retroviral medicine to children and families with AIDS in the developing world. She created Keep A Child Alive as the ipod of charity, reinventing and modernizing the old fashioned model of charitable organizations to create a new movement to save lives in emergency mode.

Jon Baker
Chief Executive Officer
Geejam

Aarthi Belani
Attorney
Cleary, Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, LLP

Nicole David
Senior Vice President
William Morris Agency

Peter Edge
President
A&R/J Records

Jody Gerson
Co-President
Sony/ATV Music Publishing

Michael Guido
Managing Partner
Carroll, Guido & Groffman, LLP

Michael Kempner
President and CEO
MWW Group

Wendy Laister
President
Magus Entertainment

JB Miller
Co-Founder and Producer
Empire Entertainment Incorporated

Erika Rose
President and CEO
Revolutionary Entertainment LLC

David Saltz
Executive Producer
ABC

Evan Vogel
Managing Partner
NIght Agency

Susan Willis
Executive Producer
Cutting Room Films

David Wirtschafter
President
William Morris Agency

South Africa

New York

45 MAIN ST STE 407
Brooklyn, NY 11201-1093
Phone: 7189651111
www.keepachildalive.org
EIN: 73-1682844