Winter 2006 - Sacred Heart Schools

Heart of the Alumni
Facing AIDS
For Jonny
Dorsey
(SJSH‘99,
SHP‘03), a
summer trip
to Zambia
was the
beginning
of a milliondollar
campaign
Anyone who knew him during his Sacred Heart days knows he
is kindhearted, and a passionate leader. So you shouldnʼt be
surprised to learn that after he spent a summer living in a Zambian
refugee camp, he couldnʼt go back to life as he knew it. Instead,
Jonny has launched a campaign called FACE AIDS to address the
AIDS epidemic he saw firsthand in Africa.
In 2003, after completing a St. Josephʼs and Sacred Heart Prep
education with a Light Blue Ribbon, Jonny went to Stanford and
followed his passion in the area of Human Biology, an interdisciplinary
program that combines biology and health policy. His area
of concentration is International Health and Infectious Disease.
The summer after his sophomore year, Jonny traveled to Zambia
with the FORGE program (Facilitating Opportunities for Refugee
Growth and Empowerment). “I chose to work with FORGE
because I thought their work was exciting, and also made good
sense.” Jonny was in Mwange, in a camp of 23,000 refugees from
the Congo. “These people came to Zambia with nothing,” said
Jonny. “I developed a mentoring program for orphans, in which
high school students served as mentors for elementary students.”
Jonny and his two co-volunteers from Stanford were shocked
to find that in the refugee camp, there were only 47 people who
had tested positive for HIV, and that only 5 people were tested for
the disease each month. “We couldnʼt believe so few people were
getting tested, when national statistics suggested that at least 1000
people in Mwange were living with HIV/AIDS.”
“We also met Katele Henriette, the only semi-open HIV-positive
person in the camp of 24,000 refugees, and began to work
with her to convince more people to find out their HIV status.”
Since then, the rate of testing has increased tenfold. Mama Katele
(pictured above) spoke openly about her HIV status in a culture
that generated great shame and stigma around the disease. Her
willingness to share with Jonny and his colleagues helped them
put a face to the great struggle of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa.
When they focused on specific ways to help their friend Mama
Katele, the focus of FACE AIDS began to take shape.
One afternoon, the three students sat on the porch, talking about
what they could do about AIDS in Zambia. No one wanted to
go home and forget what they had learned. They decided they
wanted to develop a small income-generating project that would
encourage HIV testing and help families in the refugee camp have
better lives.
Jonny explained, “We learned that once a member of a family
develops HIV, their ability to work stops and their children drop
out of school and use desperate means to generate money for the
family. However, if the person with HIV can generate a small income
three things happen: 1) they will have more protein in their
diet which will extend their life, 2) their children will be able to
remain in school, and 3) when this income is developed through a
small co-op, a support group is naturally formed.”
“By the end of our porch discussion, weʼd all decided to take one
year off from college and launch a campaign for student awareness
and fundraising,” said Jonny. “Katie stayed in Zambia to organize
co-ops of refugees to make beaded pins with the AIDS logo. These
groups double as AIDS support groups. Lauren and I returned to
California to distribute the pins and recruit more volunteers.”
The plan: Distribute 50,000 pins in the next year, raising $1
million. Then grant that $1 million to Partners in Health.
“While I was in Zambia, I saw that how you give money away
is extremely important,” said Jonny, “Many campaigns have been
ineffective and have created more cultural stigma. I think that
Partners in Health is the best organization treating HIV-positive
patients in the developing world. They were the first to show that
you could successfully provide ARVs in the developing world,
and have since reformed WHO policy. They are just now moving
into sub-Saharan Africa, and we want to speed up that process
with our funding. We also want as many university students to
understand their model as possible, and see that there are effective
ways to treat AIDS in the developing world.”
“We named the million-dollar fund the Katele fund, in honor
of the woman who started it all,” said Jonny. “After living with
AIDS for over four years, Mama Katele died on September 1,
2005, just weeks before the United Nations brought anti-retroviral
drugs (ARVs) to the refugee camp. The FACE AIDS campaign
is dedicated to her memory.”
“When we sell pins on college campuses, we tell the personal
stories of people like Katele who made the pins,” said Jonny. “I
think the personal stories make a big impact on college students
when they are at a very impressionable age.”
When reflecting back on his days at SJSH, Jonny remembers
the “Sandwiches on Sundays” program, where he got to take food
to serve at a church in Redwood City. “The one-on-one interactions
with folks who needed food were very important,” said
Jonny, “I think this experience helped me stay connected to my
community, and compassionate, as I grew up.” The SJSH community
service award was initiated that year, and Jonny was the
first recipient.
During his freshman year at SHP, Jonny traveled to Belize on
a service immersion trip, where they worked on a seawall. “This
trip was my first exposure to the developing world,” said Jonny,
“Throughout high school I got to have personal relationships with
people very different from myself, and it built my confidence in
knowing that I could have an impact on someone elseʼs life.”
Obviously, Jonnyʼs career in public service is far from over.
We look forward to the great things to come.
To learn more about Jonnyʼs work on the
FACE AIDS campaign,
please visit www.faceaids.org
The Heart of the Matter 7