Remarks by Executive Director Ian Kirumba at the Corporate Launch of the Partnership for an HIV-Free Generation

December 5, 2008

Ambassador Ranneberger, Permanent Secretary Mohammed, Honored Guests, Young People of Mukuru and Kenya.

The journey - the safari - that has brought us to this day has been long and sometimes difficult, but in every way worth it.  I left the corporate world to join this campaign and it has already transformed me in ways that I hope it will also transform countless other Kenyans.

 

My life in the private sector was always focused on the bottom line: how much product we were moving, and how our market share was holding up.  I now have a new bottom line - how many lives we're saving - and I find that this new perspective is good for me.  And I believe with all my heart that it will be good for Kenya too.

 

Development partners like the United States Government and its amazing PEPFAR program, the Government of Kenya, and numerous NGOs have learnt much and have much to teach us about HIV prevention.  But the truth of the matter is that our efforts to date have not achieved all they could - and what is needed - to help our nation and this continent achieve an HIV-Free Generation.

 

When we have asked the private sector to join us in this vital work, we usually have asked them to write a check.  And it was usually one check from one company, one time, and for one small-ish program. 

 

What sets The Partnership for an HIV-Free Generation apart from everything that has gone before is that while we still welcome their checks, what we want first and foremost are the core competencies of profit-making groups and civic associations like Rotary or Junior Achievement.  And when they commit those skills and that technology - as nineteen visionary partners are doing today - we will link them to the whole constellation of groups that seeks to reach young people with messages and programs and opportunities for healthier futures.

 

Our failure to achieve an HIV-Free generation means many things, but I have come to believe with all my heart - as well as with all my education and expertise in market research - that it most importantly means that we need everyone to bring whatever they can to the campaign.  And that we need them to stay with it, and with us, for the long, long haul.  It will take a generation to save a generation, and we start here and now to do just that.

 

While every young Kenyan is at risk, and every young Kenyan must be part of the solution, we will have a special and unrelenting focus on the needs and capacities of Kenyan girls and young women in our work.

 

We must pay attention to girls' special vulnerability because they represent an unacceptable - an immoral - 75% of infected youth between the ages of 15 and 24.  Across the country, they are four times more likely than their male age-mates to be HIV-positive.  And in informal settlements like Kibera (and likely right here in Mukuru as well), they're six - you heard me right, six - times more likely to be infected than boys the same age.

 

The Partnership for an HIV-Free Generation is committed to gender equality.

Many of our partners have learned valuable lessons about how to enlist, equip, empower and then unleash girls and young women to be agents of change who protect their own lives and promote healthy futures for themselves and their communities.

 

I am delighted to welcome you all to this event, to salute those of you who are our initial colleagues in these diverse and exciting partnerships for an HIV-Free generation, and especially to offer the microphone to Cynthia Muhanda, a girl guide of12 and a half years, representing the first of many girls who are breaking the silence and coming to the center of the response to AIDS.

 

Thank you very much.